The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves: A review

"My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year..."
- Excerpt from Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

The evenings are dark and sometimes stormy in Ann Cleeves' latest entry in her DI Vera Stanhope series. And snowy. Very, very snowy.

On the first snowy evening of winter, in blizzard conditions, Vera starts driving home in her ancient Range Rover. She is on a familiar road, but in practically zero visibility, she becomes disoriented and takes a wrong turn. She comes upon an abandoned car pulled off the road with the door standing open and stops to investigate. There is no driver around, but she deduces from the position of the seat that the driver was a short woman. Then a cry from the back seat leads her to discover a toddler strapped into his car seat. Finding no one around, she takes the child and continues on the road which she now recognizes as leading to an estate called Brockburn. It is the family home of the Stanhopes, the place where her father, Hector, grew up. She arrives at the big house to find a Christmas party in progress. She takes the youngster in to be cared for and alerts her office about the abandoned car and possibly a lost motorist in need of help. But soon, the mystery of the missing motorist is solved when a neighbor on a tractor arrives and reports he has found the body of a woman on the road. An examination of the body reveals that the woman was bashed over the head. Murder. Vera calls in her team to handle the investigation.

The investigation reveals some of Vera's family's history as well as the insular atmosphere of the village where everybody knows everybody. The dead woman was a single mother and the daughter of a couple who lives on the Brockburn estate. There had been much gossip about who was the father of her child, a name she had never revealed. Is this somehow related to her murder?

Part of the pleasure of reading mysteries for me is being able to match wits with the detective, and, after so much experience of reading hundreds, maybe thousands of mysteries over the years, I flatter myself that I'm a pretty good armchair detective. Often I can identify the culprit before he or she is revealed in the denouement. Not with a Cleeves mystery though. This is the ninth book in the series. I have read them all now in order and I am 0 for 9; Vera wins every time. This time I actually did have the eventually revealed perpetrator as one of my suspects, but I wasn't able to zero in. Cleeves is really good at hiding her clues in plain sight.

I don't mind losing to Vera though. She is the master detective. Her sergeant Joe calls her the best detective he's ever met and she prides herself on having the best team - Holly, Charlie, and Joe. It is a pleasure to watch them work, gathering information bit by bit, and presenting it to Vera until finally she pieces it all together and shows them and us the whole picture.

If you are in the market for a beautifully written, atmospheric (Northumberland) mystery that is tightly and expertly plotted and has characters that you can identify with and root for, you could do worse than to pick up a Vera Stanhope mystery. If you do though, be sure to read them in order. You don't want to deprive yourself of any pleasure.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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