Telling Tales - Ann Cleeves

Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves

First Paragraph(s):

Sitting at the bedroom window, Emma looks out at the night-time square.  The wind rattles a roof tile and hisses out from the churchyard, spitting a Coke can onto the street.  There was a gale the afternoon Abigail Mantel died and it seems to Emma that it's been windy ever since, that there have been ten years of storms, of hailstones like bullets blown against her windows and trees ripped from the earth by their roots.  It must be true at least since the baby was born.  Since then, whenever she wakes at night--to feed the baby or when James comes in late from work--the noise of the wind is there, rolling round her head like the sound of a seashell when you hold it to your ear.

My Thoughts:

This is the second book in Ann Cleeves' series featuring Inspector Vera Stanhope and her assistant, Sergeant Joe Ashworth.  I listened to this one on audio and it was ably narrated by Julia Franklin.  Audio was a good way to go for Telling Tales.  It's not a thrill-a-minute book, but a clever police procedural.  I was really caught up in the story of Vera and Joe, out of their usual patch, there to figure out what had happened 10 years before when an innocent woman was charged with murder.  Jeanie Long did not kill Abigail Mantel.  New evidence has proven it.  However, it's come too late as Jeanie has died in prison.  Vera, looking like her usual disheveled self, talks with everyone connected to the case and eventually the solution becomes clear.  Before that happens, another person is killed and some secrets are revealed.  I'm really loving these characters and this series.  Can't wait to move on to the next book, Hidden Depths.  Have you watched the TV adaptation, Vera?  I've watched a couple of episodes, but I've decided to read the books and watch later.  What do you think if you've seen it? 

Blurb:

It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie’s innocence. Abigail’s killer is still at large.

For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend--and of that fearful winter’s day when she had discovered her body lying cold in a ditch.

As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries on the peninsula and villagers are hauled back to a time they hoped to forget, tensions begin to mount. But are people afraid of the killer or of their own guilty pasts?

With each person’s story revisited, the Inspector begins to suspect that some deadly secrets are threatening to unfurl…