I enjoyed this intriguing mystery set in North Devon, England. The descriptions of the setting transported me to the towns and shores of the story. I felt I was there. The characters were interesting, many different from ones found in most murder mysteries. The plot was intricate, carefully woven so that the revelations at the end were a surprise yet completely believable. I would enjoy reading another book about the main character, a police detective, if this were to become a series. I highly recommend this book to lovers of mysteries.
I received an Advance Review Copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I was delighted to get an ARC of The Long Call. I adore Anne Cleeves and was excited to see that she's working with new characters in a new setting. Matthew Venn recently moved back to Cornwall with his new husband, Jonathan Morgan. As Venn is attending his father's funeral - on the outskirts - he makes no contact with his family and we soon learn he was shunned from his family and their cultish religion, the Brethren for questioning their beliefs. He's called away to investigate a body discovered on the beach close to Venn's home.

Venn leads the investigation into the murder and soon discovers the victim worked at the Woodyard, a fabulous new community arts center that also houses a care center for adults with Down's Syndrome. Venn's husband Jonathan was instrumental in the formation of the Woodyard and is presently the manager of the entire facility. Through the course of the investigation, Venn is aided by DS Jen Rafferty , a single mother who transferred from the city with her two teenagers to escape an abusive husband, and DS Ross May, an energetic young investigator who is under the thumb of the aging alcoholic Detective Chief Investigator.

The victim was a complicated man, severely depressed with an alcohol addiction but it appears he was getting his life together. He had befriended Lucy Braddick, who attends the Adult Down's center having met her during their work in the Woodyard's canteen. Once another of the Down's students dissappears, the investigation is somehow connected to the leader of the Brethren, the Christian Church where the care center had been, and other seemingly unrelated events.

All this takes place against the background of Crown Point, with its breath-taking beach and marsh, and other quaint villages in Devon and Cornwall. It was an excellent read and engaging throughout. The mystery is thrilling and not easy to figure out. Fans of Anne Cleeves will LOVE this book. With the engaging and relate-able characters, its a great book to start with if you haven't had the pleasure of delving into Anne Cleeves's writing and a gateway into her other fantastic works.

Ann Cleeves is the author of the. Vera Stanhope series as well as the Shetland series featuring Jimmy Perez. Now with the first in a new series she introduces DI Matthew Venn. Raised as a member of a spiritual cult, he rejected their teachings and became estranged from his parents when he married his husband. Now he has been brought back into contact with the leader of the cult when a body is found on the shore.

Simon Walden, the victim, was a former soldier who suffered from depression and alcoholism. He carried guilt for accidentally killing a child, but in his last days he talked about setting things right. A former restaurant owner, he was volunteering as a cook at the Woodyard community center.

Venn finds himself in an awkward position. His husband Jonathan manages the Woodyard. As manager he comes into contact with a number of possible suspects. The investigation is interrupted when a woman with Downs Syndrome vanishes after leaving the Woodward. While there is no connection to Walden, Venn believes that this is too much of a coincidence. She is found two days later, but then a second woman with Downs Syndrome disappears, one who definitely had a connection to Walden and the Woodyard.

DI Venn is assisted by DS Jen Rafferty, a single mother, and DC Ross, a young officer who is eager to prove himself. While Venn is all business and tends to be serious, Jonathan is his opposite. He is much more laidback and spontaneous. He is also patient and understanding when dealing with the disabled and their family members who use the services provided by the Woodyard..

Ann Cleeves has once again written characters you can care for and a mystery that slowly comes together until all of the pieces fit together in an ending that is somewhat unexpected. Her setting on the English coast, the action and her characters will have you eagerly awaiting the return of DI Venn.

I would like to thank NetGalley and St Martin’s Books for providing this book for my review.

Sometimes you cannot avoid having to go home, even years after you left, losing all you held dear. Detective Matthew Venn went “home” for a funeral and became part of a local murder investigation. Now he must face the demons of his youth, the strict and cultish religious group his estranged family clung to and still hold on to all he holds dear today, including his self-confidence and ability to do his job.

THE LONG CALL by Ann Cleaves is a good old fashioned mystery that slowly builds, page after page, weaving its story into an intricate tapestry that explodes with a riot of action and color as it begins its rapid race to the finish.

Each character comes to life, flawed, unique of personality and carrying their own baggage that at times weighs them down, yet gives them the strength to carry on. The main character is a man of substance, deeply thoughtful, emotionally charged and far from the sniping, edgy and slightly roguish detectives we often meet. He follows the rules, attempts to keep his own set of values while fighting an uphill battle with the ghosts from his past.

An excellent read for British-style mystery lovers who enjoy the darkness and suspense of a well-written tale.

I received a complimentary ARC edition from Minotaur Books! This is my honest and voluntary review.

Series: Two Rivers - Book 1
Publisher: Minotaur Books (September 3, 2019)
Publication Date: September 3, 2019
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Print Length: 384 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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Very entertaining, riveting, convoluted tale set in a small village in contemporary England. I felt drawn to the characters and delighted to discover the daily lives of the villagers. The story line was handled thoughtfully and the conclusion was developed slowly and meticulously through the police work. Thanks to #netgalley for #thelongcall prepublication.

Great Start To The Role Out Novel Of A New Series

The novel opens with a dead body on a northern Devon shore, and the main character, Detective Inspector, Matthew Venn, not far away attending his estranged father’s funeral. The victim had a short history in the area that started with him arriving at the steps of a local mental health project dead drunk and apparently deep in despair. The novel grows from this start.

I used the word, grows, because this novel is not a page turner or starts like horses bolting from the starting gate but unfolds like a beautiful and intricate quilt. All the action takes place in and around Barnstaple, a relatively small community. Progress is made through strong police team work. As the investigation proceeds, the cast of characters grows and interconnections between them develop like the threads weaving the design into the quilt. The evening meetings of DI Venn’s team reveals the complexity of running a team investigation and illustrates well the reactions to all of the new information and the effects of the twists, turns and dead ends that the team discovers. Other crimes occur and also affect the murder investigation. Normally, it is the speed of the main storyline that captures my interest and kept me reading. All of this made the storyline as a wonderfully complex story that unfolded and captured my interest and held it throughout the entire novel.

The main storyline was complemented with a rich B storyline as you would expect in the inaugural novel in a series. There are many issues with DI Venn that are tied into the main storyline: this is his first major investigation as the DI in Barnstaple; he is estranged with his fundamental religious parents; and his husband manages the Woodyard Center that has ties to most major characters in this story that also presents a conflict of interest for DI Venn in leading this investigation. I really liked seeing how the relationship with DI Venn and his mother changed as the novel proceeded. There are decent B-storylines for DI Venn’s main team members.

There is not any sex scenes and minimal vulgar language and that includes British version of bad language. DI Venn’s same sex marriage is a major part of the main and B storylines, but isn’t emphasized, so I believe that these aspects should not objectionable to most readers. The novel is set in Britain, and the use of British words abound. I found reading this novel on a Kindle very helpful because the embedded dictionary is very good in defining most of these words. The easy access to the Internet allowed me to find those words not found in the dictionary. This occurred more often than usual.

This is the first novel by Ann Cleeves that I have read. The worst thing that I can say about this novel was that it took me a little longer than normal to read. Otherwise, I really enjoyed reading this novel and eagerly await the next and subsequent novels. I enjoyed the author’s attention to detail. While reading I noticed use of a term of endearment, my lover. I marked it as a typo. It was used three times when I expected my love to be used. Upon writing this review, I researched this term. I found a webpage dedicated to British terms of endearment. The first was my love. I went through the entire webpage. At the end there were some regional terms. There it was. The explanation provided was that it was used in South West England, right where the novel is set.

All of the above is why I rate this novel with five stars. If you have read the author’s previous series, Vera and Shetland, and liked them, do not miss this one. If like me, you have not read any Ann Cleeves before but like the genre, do give this novel a try.

I have received a free kindle version of this novel through NetGalley from St. Martin's Press with an expectation for an honest, unbiased review. I wish to thank St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this novel early.

The Long Call is a fair murder mystery, except that it takes way too long for the story to come to fruition.

A body is found on a beach. The detective, Matthew Venn, will be working the case in North Devon where he grew up. Unfortunately, he is estranged from his parents and had left North Devon and that part of his life behind. Now he’s back and must revisit the past that he left.

I especially wasn’t crazy about Matthew, though. I didn’t find him likable, but, instead, weak and too troubled by the baggage he dragged with him. In fact, when not on the job, he was a bit whiney.

There are a lot – no, really, a lot – of characters, some memorable, some not.

As usual, the author had me wanting to visit the setting of the book, North Devon this time. I enjoyed the countryside.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Ann Cleeves is a master at stroytelling and this story is another example of her skills. She does an outstanding job at developing her characters and it is nicely done here. This is the start of a new series so if you have enjoyed her other works, you will certainly not want to miss this one! I received an advance copy from NetGallet in exchange for an honest review.

The Long Call is an interesting new mystery series from Anne Cleeves, featuring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. He's moody, thoughtful, compassionate, and introspective, and we learn much about his backstory when the book opens with him standing outside the church and observing his father's funeral. Cleeves has written this as a character-driven mystery, as she does so well with her other series. Matthew is intriguing, as is his Detective Sergeant Jen Rafferty. Neither of them are stereotypical, and I found Jen especially clever. There are a lot of characters, and the mystery of the man murdered on the beach tends to progress slowly and perhaps even bog down a bit in the middle, but Venn and his friends are interesting and complex enough that I will look forward to future books in this series.

Thanks to Macmillan and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of the book.

What an interesting story! The Long Call is the personification of the trope "you can never go home again".

Detective Matthew Venn has left the religious community he once called home, and created a new life. Then a body is found on a beach and Matthew must return and solve the mystery...who is the victim, how did he end up on the beach, who killed him and why? As Matthew investigates he must deal with the very people he left behind at the same time he is attempting to solve a challenging crime. The Long Call is a real pager turner; be sure to take in on vacation!

This is an interesting book on several levels. For some weird reason, I was given a copy to read ahead of its publication. I'm supposed to write and post a review, and so I shall.

Superficially, it's a standard murder mystery, perhaps a bit of a police procedural. Someone gets murdered and a group of police muck around until things unravel and they can finger the culprit or culprits. But what makes this a bit different from most of the mystery and crime novels I've read in the past is that it deals with topics that would never have appeared in previous decades.

We find ourselves in Devon. Matthew Venn is the inspector in charge of the investigation. His two "sidekicks" are Jen Rafferty, a single mother with a bit of a wild streak in off hours, and Ross May, an impetuous young man who thinks he's just about the coolest, most manly person ever to have lived. He's a rugby star in his off hours and is married to a vapid "fashion accessory".

Ok, fairly standard so far. But what's different is that Matthew Venn is gay and married to Jonathan Church. This has caused problems with Matthew's family in that they belong to a so-called conservative religious sect, known as the Barnum Brethren. The Brethren don't countenance people's being gay. So Matthew has been estranged from his family for quite some time, and at the beginning of the book is seen in the shadows viewing his father's funeral from a distance.

Jonathan Church runs an outfit called the Woodyard. It's a combination of community arts center, with theater, studios, bar and cafe, and also a day center for adults with learning disabilities. So, much of the back story, so to speak, involves the learning disabled people, in particular three young women. I'm not sure I ever read any books before that treated learning disabled people with sensitivity. Basically, these young women are like the rest of us, only a bit different...kind of like we are all of us a bit different in multitudinous ways.

A young man, Simon Walden, is found stabbed. His pockets have been picked fairly thoroughly. But not completely. The police manage to find a scrap of paper that eventually leads them to find that Walden had been living with two young women, Caroline Preece and Gaby Henry. It seems that Walden was a homeless alcoholic who showed up at a church outreach center that was run by Preece. Preece's fiancé, Edward Craven, is a pastor at that church. Gaby Henry is artist in residence at the Woodyard, and it appears that Walden had done some volunteer work for the Woodyard. Apparently, he'd also befriended one of the learning disabled adults at the center, Lucy Braddick.

Well, anyway, as things go along, we learn that Walden isn't quite like he'd originally been portrayed. Nor are his interactions with the other characters exactly as they originally portrayed them. As is natural in this genre, lots of people end up having things they try to keep hidden. But it all comes out in the end, and in a rather surprising fashion as well. I can well imagine, that if this book is the first in a series, I will find myself reading along.

This was an impressive start to the new mystery series by Ann Cleeves. There's a good group of core characters for her to work with so I'm excited to see where the series is going to go in future books.

Years ago Detective Matthew Venn left the church he grew up in, which also meant losing his family as well. He is now in charge of a murder investigation that is hitting close to home. His past and his present seem to be on a collision course which might make solving this crime more difficult than he originally thought.

Even though Matthew is the main character in the book, the story does bounce around between multiple characters connected to the case including Jen Rafferty, a detective sergeant and single mom. She has an interesting backstory like Matthew and I have my fingers crossed she plays as big of a role in future books as she did in this one. I felt invested in the characters themselves as much as I was in the mystery which was nice because that isn't always the case.

The author did a good job coming up with a mystery that in my opinion was complex enough that you really are left guessing until the very end. The small English seaside setting was a great location for the story. If you like police detective novels that have a more small town feel to them rather than the hustle and bustle of the big city ones, this is certainly a good one to check out!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review!

Cleeves does a great job setting the stage for her new series in The Long Call. Her soulful Detective pulled me in and I enjoyed getting to know him and experiencing a number of other characters simultaneously. The deep description of the countryside did slow the pace a bit for me, but I certainly did come away with a strong sense of place--which I enjoyed. The whodunit piece of the story had a cozy feel to it and that was good match for the locale and story pacing. Looking forward to her next book!

The Long Call is the first entry in a new series written by Ann Cleeves. I was disappointed to find the plot moved quite slowly and none of the main characters engaged me. DI Matthew Venn doesn't particularly like the other two members of his investigative team and that antipathy keeps the work relationships in a murky fog which never rises to dislike but it also doesn't contain warm or personal interactions.

This is a book with a lot of characters and it becomes quite a feat to keep up with all of them. There is the murder of a man thought to be homeless and there is the disappearance of a woman who utilizes a facility provided for developmentally challenged adults. The activities of this novel revolve around that community center called the Woodyard which is run by Jonathan Church, husband of Matthew Venn. This should have resulted in the reassignment of the case to another police officer but for the benefits of this story Matthew remained in charge. A definite eye roll opportunity for me, but it turned out to be just the first of many.

I did not read anything compelling enough in this story to make me seek out the next book in the series. I have read some very good stories written by Ann Cleeves but, as I said, this one was a disappointment.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for an e-Galley of this novel.

This book is an English police procedural with complex characters and a strong sense of place. The story moves along sedately--maybe a tad too sedately--as the author weaves in details of the people and setting. I found some of the twists a little obvious, but this is the sort of book you read for characters as much as you do for the plot. This book was my first exposure to the work of Ann Cleeves, and It made me want to read more of her novels.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance digital review copy.

The book was well paced and I enjoyed the protagonists very much. There are secrets revealed and characters that are driven by their pasts...very much a character-driven read, with a diverse group of interesting, flawed, people that were skillfully developed. I felt like I knew them by the end, and would love to be able to meet them in real life. Will be looking forward to more from Ann Cleeves.

I liked this but it was painfully slow. It’s the story of a small community on the sea in southern Britain. A murder occurs on the beach. The man is a tortured soul but has good intentions. He is a volunteer at a community facility that has adult classes but also a school for people with learning disabilities. The small town police force while trying to solve the murder also have to solve a few missing person cases and uncover a conspiracy that involves a few prominent people. It took forever to get anywhere in this story as it plodded along. Most of the characters have some flaws and they are not very likable. I think a bit of editing would have made this a much better book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was a mystery/thriller about an investigator coming back to his roots to investigate a body found on the beach. This is the beginning of a series.
I really didn't enjoy this book very much,but I'm unsure if it was the author's writing or more. I've not been a huge fan of series books. Perhaps its the time frame of delivery, and trying to remember too many details about that particular detective, town, police force. I do like a good mystery though.
This book was way too slow for me, and far too long. I think I had to drag myself to read about 70 percent of this book before I even became interested. Then it picked up pace and became more interesting.
I'm a huge fan of BBC television, I love reading, so I don't now why I didn't enjoy this book more.
Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for this advanced readers copy. This book is set to release in September 2019.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Although I’ve only read a few of Ann Cleeves’ mysteries, this one is my favorite so far. I appreciated the quiet competence of Matthew Venn and look forward to future books in this series. There were enough suspects in the mystery to keep me guessing, and I felt like the minor characters were fleshed out enough to make the reader care about them. Recommended.

The Long Call is my first exposure to the writing of Ann Cleeves. I was pleasantly surprised at the in-depth exploration of character and the fine use of land/place as a character. I am always drawn to character driven books more than plot driven and this one did not disappoint. I was as intrigued with the guilt-ridden drive of the murdered victim to make amends of his drunken accidental killing of a child as with the unfolding of the ongoing mystery to be solved., with its ever tightening involvement of people and family left behind, only to emerge in powerful ways.