Ann Cleaves does it again! This book immediately draws the reader into the plot. Her characters are complex and as the story unfolds the author reveals the many layers of the individual characters making the reader question, what is this character really like? Just when the reader thinks they know the answer another twist takes place. This book was one that I didn't want to put down and one in which I hope to meet some of the characters again.

Thank you to Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Detective Matthew Venn is the lead on a local murder case with some very personal ties for him. Matthew and his team chase a murderer hell bent on doing whatever necessary to protect their secret that may take them all down. On the positive side, the characters are believable and well developed, and likeable. The ending was well written and is the reason I didn't rate this book with two stars rather than three. The storytelling dind't engage me and the book took longer to read that I would have liked as a result. Additionally the vernacular of the book can sometimes be difficult to get through, since it takes place in England. Taking all of this into consideration, I didnt hate the book by any means however I will not be looking to read another book by this author.


Reading Progress

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for this ARC. I was invited to read this, so it was very exciting.

This was my first book from Ann Cleeves, and a rare mystery novel from the POV from a DI. I am not one who really enjoys detective novels, but I think this picky tendency was softened by the fact that this book took place in the UK. The characters were fantastic - AND SO REFRESHING. Overall, the writing was great and for a detective novel - it was awesome! I may stick with this series.

As all of Ann Cleeves books, the scenery was a character of its own. Enjoyed that she had a LGBTQ+ individual as her main character/detective.

This is the first book I've read by this author, but it won't be the last. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and am glad it's a series. I'm interested in following Matthew Venn's career. He's calm, professional, respectful and very human. As good as he is at his job, he's plagued by doubt....like so many of us.

What I liked most about the book is that I couldn't solve the mystery. I thought I had, many times, but I was always wrong. Cleeve did an excellent job creating a truly intriguing mystery with a lot of clues, but none are predictable.

I had trouble putting the book down because I really needed to know who did it!

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the advanced copy!

Thank you St Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced review copy. This story was fabulous. My favorite character was Jenn, as a mom, as a cop and as a coworker. From the beginning I was engaged and did not want to stop reading until the very end. I like how the author peeled back the layers of who Simon was. I found that to be the most interesting part of the book.

The Long Call is a novel where the devil is very much in the details. This is a novel that introduces the character of Detective Matthew Venn. Matthew is a gay detective, who is recently married to his partner. We pick up after the death of Matthew’s estranged father. As lead investigator Matthew’s team catches a fresh case. A man stabbed on an isolated beach. The dead man is an unusual character who seemed to have few friends in life, and who kept an unusual number of secrets. At the center of the story is a facility run in part by Matthew’s husband. The facility acts as an enrichment zone for people who suffer from intellectual disabilities. The stabbing victim spent his spare time volunteering for this facility, and making friends with some of its residents. The deeper Matthew and his team dig into the apparent homicide, the stranger the case seems to get, and the more the stakes deepen. Matthew and his team are all in when disabled women who attend the facility start to disappear, victims of apparent abductions. It appears that someone is committed to keeping secrets at any cost.

This novel unfolds in a slow, methodical manner with thoroughly developed characters. The story is satisfying, and unfolds in completely realistic way that seems completely plausible. It is good to see an author write a lead character that doesn’t adhere to the standard format. A worthwhile read.

This was the first Ann Cleeves mystery I have read and I am now a fan. If you love English murder mysteries, you won't be disappointed.

Ann Cleeves has delivered another page turning mystery in The Long Call. A new series, this book focuses on Detective Matthew Venn in the southeastern city of Barstaple in the UK. Her characters are likeable and the mystery was complex enough to leave me wondering who did it until the very end. I highly recommend this novel.

In The Long Call, Ann Cleese’s takes readers back to where she grew up in North Devon to introduce her new series, featuring a married gay DI, Matthew Venn. When a man’s body is found on the shore, Venn’s investigation will take him to the Woodward, an arts center that provides community courses, as well as a cafe and daycare for the developmentally disabled population in the area.

With the Woodward supervised by Matthew’s husband, the victim volunteered in the cafe’s kitchen. Why was he living with two young women in an attic room? And why, in the days before his murder, did he ride the bus with a Down’s syndrome woman from the center?

There are a plethora of secrets Venn and his team will uncover, but which ones have to do with the murder? With interesting characters, a wonderful setting to explore, and a complex plot, Cleese’s has knocked it out of the park with a series that will have readers clamoring for Book Two. Highly recommended.

I discovered Ann Cleeves a few years ago and binged her Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez books. Now she has introduced a new detective, Matthew Venn, who struggles with his past while working on a future with his husband Jonathan. Cleeves does some of her best storytelling here, creating likable and intriguing characters working their way through a clever plot. She sets the stage for further development of Venn, Jen Rafferty, Ross, and Jonathan, which makes me eager for the next one in this series.

Here, I particularly appreciated Cleeves’ sensitive and accurate portrayal of adult women who have Downs Syndrome. Lucy Braddick is especially sassy and clever, with a smile that lights up the room.

I’ll be recommending this new series and looking forward to the next TV adaptation of Cleeves’ work!

This book is hard to review.  The first half to three-quarters was hard to read.  The author wrote popular TV series previously, and this could be why it read like a screenplay.  Person said this, person responded this, scene was that, end scene.  It didn't help that the paragraph formatting and Kindle load are off, but could be because ARC.
Despite this, there is good character building.  The second half, especially last 1/3 was excellent. The denouement was a surprise to this reader.  Not a cliffhanger but like a season finale as this is the first in a series.
Lots of touchy subjects, but handled well.

My first Ann Cleeves book, I can't wait to read more. This book was an intricately woven procedural crime novel. Nothing too flashy, real people with lives and back stories. I highly recommend this book!

* I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This was my first book by Ann Cleeves and I found it very slow and not to my taste. I didn’t really feel connected to the characters and had a hard time finishing it. I will definitely try other books by her before I make a decision but this one just didn’t do it for me. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a solid first installment in the new British police procedural series called Two Rivers, by the author best known for the Shetland series as well as the Vera Stanhope books.

While the book gets off to a bit of a slow start, it really picks up and the reader soon finds that friends and neighbors are not always what they seem.

This series, featuring detective Matthew Venn, offers a huge amount of potential and I, for one, am absolutely looking forward to reading the next books in the series.

Highly recommended, suspenseful mystery written by a real pro.

What a treat to be introduced to Ann Cleeves. I had never heard about this prolific writer and it was exciting to get my hands on the first in a new series.This is a winner for police procedural fans. The book begins when Matthew is standing outside the church at his father's funeral. When he lost faith in the church's evangelical stance, he was not welcome back with open arms. While in the university he came out as gay and had since married .Meanwhile, shoot back to the funeral where a washed up body is found at the beach with a stab wound .Matthew and his two work partners now begin the messy work of trying to uncover the murderer.The book excels at giving a visual sense of the community and also the complex characters involved as Matthew and his team dig deeper into the clues. However, I felt the book too sluggish in the beginning and had to push myself to the exciting end.

Cleeves’ new series stars Matthew Venn, a British detective living near the sea in North Devon with his new husband and facing emotional demons from the past as well as physical ones in the present. When a dead man is found on the beach and two women with Downs Syndrome are kidnapped, Matthew is convinced there is a connection between the crimes and fears that it may come too close to home. He grew up in the area as a part of a strict evangelical community, the Brethren, and was disenfranchised when he married. His husband is the director of a newly opened community center with connections to both the leader of the Brethren and the victims. Cleeves gives us, in Matthew, a flawed character rife with insecurities. The events in the book begin the process of his healing, as broken family ties appear to be mending. Matthew’s team is introduced, with tensions and backstories developed. The location comes alive and the plotting is complex and intriguing. The resolution satisfies. Cleeves’ fans who are lamenting the end of the Shetland series will find much to love in her new characters and setting.

The Long Call was my first Ann Cleeves' book. I had seen her name in the credits of Shetland and decided to see what her writing was like. As you can expect, I was not disappointed.

First of all, Cleeves gives us a gay male protagonist who has to navigate through the difficult relationships of his past from when and where he grew up as part of a Mennonite-like Christian sect called the Barum Brethren. Somehow, it wasn't being gay that got him shunned from his family and community. It was questioning them. Questioning the authority of the elders and the church was the more severe misconduct.

Of course the Brethren had been hot on the sin of gambling, a vice on a par with adultery, sodomy, and not wearing hats to meetings.

Secondly, the supporting cast of characters are women with Down's Syndrome, particularly the one named Lucy who becomes a target for kidnappers, a murderer, and a rapist. Her friend Christine is taken and has to fight against the odds as the North Devon police search for her. There's a third woman who is named and described, Rosa Holsworthy, who becomes integral in the current cases due to a past crime. It was the way that Cleeves treated each learning disabled character that deserves significant praise. There was no monolith. She gave each woman her own personality, size, maturity, family dynamic, and things they liked. Christine's parents and her aunt and uncle play pivotal roles in the criminal conspiracy. They're also tied to Detective Venn's history with the Brethren and to his husband Jonathan's work life at the Woodyard Center.

Detective Venn has a lot of the qualities of old noir gumshoes. He's so dedicated to his job and solving the cases that he has to make the choice to choose the work over being at home with his husband. Fortunately, Cleeves gives readers the character of Jonathan, always forgiving and understanding about Venn's duties as a cop. Jonathan is a breath of fresh air brought in at the right times when the mood is heavy and dramatic. He is the bright light in Venn's world.

Cleeves also includes the St. Hubert's programs for people with mental illness. She handles the situational environmental and the characters who are in roles of social workers, priests, and the clientele with delicacy. Between the people who attend the Woodyard and those who go to St. Hubert's for therapy and group counseling, there were ample opportunities for Cleeves to slide into stereotypes and myths about mental illness, but she never did. The characters surviving suicides of family members are allowed breathing room to be realistic and flat out honest.

Some of the other people had more severe learning disabilities. They were cared for in a different group. Some couldn't talk, but made odd noises, squeaks, and squeals. There was a man with a head too small for his body, people with twisted limbs, who couldn't walk and used wheelchairs. Maurice was embarrassed now at his reaction, his horror, his feeling that this was some kind of freak show and that his Lucy didn't belong there.

Something I noticed about the way the police in this story address each other was that they use first names. I've noticed this on a BBC property, DCI Banks. Perhaps, like other British-isms I had to look up, this is how it really is over there. I think our police are so militaristic especially in larger departments rather than small towns, that they refer to each other by last name or even nicknames.

The elegance of the sentences left me in a trance of pictures dancing through my mind. Her descriptions are lyrical and willowy. They aren't the kind of poetic metaphors that beat one over the head in annoyance. They're beautiful even when the subject is horrifying.

He pictured Alice Wozencroft bent double over the keys, dressed entirely in black, hands like claws, a nose like a beak. As close to a crow as a woman could be. She'd been old even when he was a boy.

Detective Venn is confronted with violence against the most vulnerable members of his community. His tenacity keeps him moving on little sleep until he protects the next person from being hurt. Part of him worries that his husband will realize how neglectful it feels being at home cooking and cleaning after work only to get the call that Venn won't make it back for dinner.

Venn's colleagues, Ross and Jen are given opportunities to show off their personalities too, though Jen moreso. She's a single mother who would often prefer staying up all night partying than doing either her job or raising kids.

Jen liked the idea of yoga, but didn't have the patience for it. The building was deceptively spacious and light. There were posters on the walls, semi-religious imagery of rainbows and doves, slogans about taking power, and loving the inner you. Here it seemed hope and the possibility of redemption abounded. It made Jen feel like punching someone.

In that one fragment of a paragraph, readers are given all they need to understand what kind of person Jen is.

As for the crimes to solve, there were several which intertwined through the conspiracy. Cleeves takes readers on a ride through the people who define themselves as powerful, entitled, and wielding authority in small towns. She allows the reader to hate a character or change their mind about them as they develop. Simon Walden is a central character, a prime suspect who could be just another alcoholic character looking to be saved. Instead, Cleeves sculpts Walden into a man of mystery, one who takes ownership of his mistakes and seeks redemption. Dennis Salter, a leader of the Brethren and the uncle to Christine, shoots out red flags that he is not a nice man. It's easy to detect Dennis Salter as an evil bastard. That comes out even more in the third act when readers get a better look into his marriage and friendships. Salter never misses the chance to land a digging mocking insult at Detective Venn.

"This is all about conspiracy. Entitled people more worried about their own reputations than the people in their care, losing any sense of humanity along the way. A kind of collective madness. They're all involved to some degree."

Besides the Brethren, there are other so-called Christians who don't seem to have their moral compass pointing due north. Is allowing someone to get away with a crime also a crime itself? Who gets redemption and who doesn't? Who is worthy of another chance and who isn't? Does saving reputations for places that are supposed to be safe havens outweigh publicizing any wrong-doings? Maybe the author has had her own battles with Christian churches or maybe she wrote this to hold up a mirror to the real world.

The crimes also include issues of sexual consent. I have to open about this as a Trigger Warning / Content Note more than ever because it does involve women with Down's Syndrome. The perpetrator, once cornered and forced to confess, goes through all the defenses: "she had a reputation" to promises of "it'll never happen again." Among other sensitive subjects, some mentioned already, there's: self-harm/suicide, depression, sexual violence, gaslighting and domestic violence, and murder. Cleeves handles these situations in ways that I wish other authors would, particularly cis-male authors who don't seem to understand how to write that content without being exploitative and boring old motivations for the hero characters.* The Long Call gets five stars and a new Ann Cleeves fan.

* For more on how to write sexual violence effectively, I have a three-part series: Addressing Rape Culture in Fiction part one, two, and three.

From the author of the Vera and Shetland series, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside of the church where his father’s funeral is taking place. Then he gets a phone call. Secrets from the past and feelings he thought he had left behind.

This book centers on the investigation of the murder of a man whose body is found on the beach in a small English town. I found the book to be rather slow and it didn’t really engage my interest until almost three quarters of the way into it. I didn’t really connect with any of the characters and felt that the only one that had much character development was the lead investigator, Matthew Venn, who, in my opinion, had too many issues for a man who’d risen as far as he had in his career. I unfortunately was not engaged enough to continue on with further books in this series.

Thank you NetGalley for the reading opportunity.