Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves

Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves

First Paragraph(s):

Julie stumbled from the taxi and watched it drive away.  At the front gate she paused to compose herself.  Best not to go in looking pissed after all those lectures she'd given the kids.  The stars wheeled and dipped in the sky and she almost threw up.  But she didn't care.  It had been a good night, the first with the girls for ages.  Though it wasn't the girls that had made it so special, she thought, and realized there was a great soppy beam on her face.  Just as well it was dark and there was no one to see.

My Thoughts:

Hidden Depths is the third book in the Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope crime series.  I'm really enjoying listening to these books - this one narrated by Ann Dover.  In this book, a young man is killed and left in the tub with flowers, his sister asleep in another part of the house.  Their mother comes home from a night out with friends and finds him.  A few days after this, another young person is strangled and left near the sea, also with flowers surrounding her.  Vera, Joe and others on their team interview numerous people, including a group of men who have been friends for a long time.  They are birders - something Vera herself knows a bit about as her father was very interested in birds.  There are lies and obsession and infidelity.  There's danger to another young person.  Vera makes her canny way through all the clues and comes up with the truth in the end.  As I've noted before, these are not thrillers, but they are interesting police procedurals that I am liking very much.  I'm moving on to the audio of the next book, which I read in print last year.  It's Silent Voices.

Blurb:

On a hot summer on the Northumberland coast, Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers.

This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued. But now, Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death. As local residents are forced to share their private lives, sinister secrets are slowly unearthed.

And all the while the killer remains in their midst, waiting for an opportunity to prepare another beautiful, watery grave…