Wow! What a read this was!
Often personal stories of detectives can be boring, and predictable, but not this one.
This book had me turning pages, and wanting to do nothing else.
#anncleves #stmartinspress #thedarkesyevening

Another good British cozy mystery. Lots of interesting characters and family drama in a small village. A tragic death and a infant left alone is a plot that tears at your heart. The author does a great job of connecting the families with history that goes back generations. Lots of suspects and twists to keep the reader guessing.

Although I've known about the Vera Stanhope series for a long time (and have watched a couple episodes of the miniseries with Brenda Blethyn), I've never read any of the books. Which is odd, since I'm a huge fan of series with female detectives, especially British ones!

This forthcoming installment didn't disappoint. It's just before Christmas, and a raging blizzard leads Vera to take a wrong turn on her drive home. There, she almost literally stumbles across a body--and a seemingly abandoned infant in the victim's car. And the whole scene is only steps away from Brockburn, her family's ancient home. Vera's father walked away from his gentrified roots when Vera was just a child, so Vera barely remembers the place, but the case pulls her back into the Stanhopes' orbit.

Vera is an interesting detective figure: a bit Columbo-esque, in the sense that many people around her (including, sometimes, her own team) think she's a bit daft, and maybe losing her marbles...but of course, her long pauses and sudden tangents are actually a sign of her brilliance. She's also always down for biscuits or brownies or a piece of cake, if they're offered as she makes her rounds interviewing people.

Not having read other books in the series, I'm not sure how this one measures up. I felt like there were a couple of plot holes, especially around the second murder victim. That's not a spoiler, because as anyone knows, there's almost *always* a second victim in a British country-house mystery, and that's exactly what this is, even though Vera herself can hardly believe it: at one point she recalls her father mocking her choice to become a cop, telling her "'It won't be like Agatha Christie...all country houses, vicars, butlers, and wills.' This case was like that, though." Cleeves has fun playing with the tropes of the genre, upholding some and skewering others.

This is a very Christmassy and atmospheric winter mystery--I may re-read it come the holidays. Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

Darkest Night

A Vera Stanhope novel is the reading equivalent of catching up with an old friend while sipping fine wine, putting one’s feet up as a fire blazes inside and, in this book, snow drifts outside.

This is murder at a country house during a dinner for the neighborhood swells. For those unfamiliar with her, Vera is the lead detective with a loyal team who admire her in spite of their exasperation with her. She is rather slovenly, overweight, pushy and usually one mental step ahead, sometimes marching into danger without much forethought.

On a snowy night in December, determined to drive home in blizzard conditions, Vera loses her bearings and takes a wrong turn. She comes upon a car with the lights on and the door open, apparently stuck in the snow, but there is no driver. There is, however, a sleeping baby bundled up and strapped into a carseat. As it happens, the only lights visible in the storm come from a manor house which Vera immediately recognizes as one belonging to relatives of hers but whom she hasn’t seen in years.

This familial tie serves to introduce the reader to a partial cast of characters as Vera barges in on the dinner party with a baby nobody recognizes. Calls are made as the dinner winds down and when a tenant farmer arrives in a farm tractor to retrieve his daughters who helped serve dinner, he comes upon a dead body near the back door. The young woman is, of course, the baby’s unmarried mother, father unknown.

Vera and her intrepid crew have more suspects than motives but as Ann Cleeves cleverly peels back the layers of neighborhood secrets, tossing a few red herrings as she does so well, the suspect list grows but it is only when assumptions about motive prove wrong does Vera begin to focus on the murderer.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this new mystery by Ann Cleeves. Although it's the ninth book in a new-to-me series, I had no trouble following the story as a stand-alone, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, the frumpy, middle-aged leader of a well-oiled team of police investigators, is a well-rounded and sympathetic main character. The story is told in third-person limited, and the point of view shifts from Vera to various team members and persons-of-interest. Not only does this storytelling method help in revealing various pieces of the puzzle, but it also shows Vera through the eyes of others.
Although the setting is modern-day, the quaint old English villages and feudal manor give it an old-time flavor.
The story opens on a dark, snowy evening just before Christmas. Vera is out on the road, determined to make it home despite admonitions from her team about the stormy weather. She gets lost and comes across an abandoned vehicle, with the door open and a toddler inside. Finding no sign of the driver, she takes the baby to the nearby Brockburn estate, which happens to be owned by her distant relatives.
The Stanhope clan is having a party when Vera arrives with the child. Before she leaves, one of the tenants arrives to pick up his daughters (who are working at the party) and he's frantic because he just discovered the body of a woman in the snow. The woman is, of course, the baby's mother.
Vera summons her team and an investigation ensues, uncovering many family secrets in its wake.
The author did a good job casting suspicion on multiple characters, and although I had briefly suspected the perpetrator, I really had no clue who the murderer was until it was revealed.
Great character-driven mystery!

I am a longtime fan of the Vera series by Ann Cleeves and this was a very good installment. I would actually give this one 4.5 stars because I enjoyed meeting some of Vera’s extended family and learning a bit more about what makes her tick. She seems to be softening a bit in middle age.

The book opens with Vera traveling in a snow storm and, missing her turning, she comes upon an abandoned car with the door open and a child inside. She takes the unharmed child to safety, but that is just the beginning of the mystery. Where is the driver? And why would the door be left open in a snow storm with a child inside?

When a body is found, the team are soon hard at it with Joe and Holly helping the boss sift through the many relationships and connections in the small town while trying to conceal their curiosity about Vera’s extended family.

The snowstorm limits the number of suspects and yet there are many secrets to unearth here. I was surprised at the ending but it was very plausible.

I love all of the cozy descriptions of the firesides while the blizzard rages outside. There is always plenty of tea and coffee. Vera seems to invite confidences from the people she meets as she lets them tell their stories.

I had recently binged the tv series as well so the characters and the scenery really came alive for me. Many thanks to NetGalley and St Martins press for the ARC which I was so happy to read.

I did enjoy this book. There were a few slow parts that made it hard to read but overall I liked it. This is my first book in this series and I didn't feel lost reading it either. So yes you can read this as a stand alone. The killer once you knew who it was made total sense but before that the author made a lot of redirects. Which made the story more fun to read trying to figure out the killer and why. I think they figured out the why pretty early on, it was the who that took awhile.

*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

So glad to have Vera back! Great to be able to read this so early. We will be getting this for my library and I will be telling people to read it like I do with all of her books. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Thanks to NetGalley, publisher and author, for allowing me to have a copy of this book to review. This was a very entertaining mystery, it kept me interested from beginning to almost the end. I really like the interaction between Vera, Joe and Holly. Once the murders were resolved, there was a little bit more story to read but I was not interested, Other than this, I really liked it. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Watching the VERA series on NetFlix gave me a feeling for place and time, and a visual of the characters, but reading about them allowed me to see the thought process and the questions about the way people treat people. This mystery has a tightly constructed plot, great characters. Even ones that you might hate, you might begin to understand and may even feel sorry for. This is a story that looks not just at two murders, but at the repercussions and the fallout on families and the whole village.

Lorna has been murdered, viciously, in the dark of night in the middle of a snowstorm. Looking over the scene, Vera suspected that lights from a nearby house would be hardly visible. Lorna must have known where she was going. Vera realized quite clearly driving here where she'd taken the wrong road in the blizzard. There were two right turns, very close to each other, and she'd missed the first, the road not taken, which would have led her home.

Sprinkled with local words like tarn, a doorstop sandwich, did a runner, glampers in the garden, a skein of geese, stottie, waxed jacket, bothy, a cafetiere of coffee, and bairn, this is a story of family, and the bonds that tie us together.

Robert Frost's poem Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening pops up from time to time during the narrative, which takes place in the winter, under a blanket of snow, in deserted fields. There are plenty of suspects, of course. When the murderer is identified, and Vera visits the homes of some of the families, though she is exhausted, she remarks, "I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep."

I read this EARC courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley. pub date 09/08/20

This latest chapter in the story of Vera Stanhope does not disappoint. Once again, Vera confronts a difficult crime to unravel. She and her team are challenged by the death of a young woman whose connections to the rural village where she lived lead to discoveries of new connections and family secrets before eventually revealing the killer. Ann Cleeves does her usual skillful job of unraveling clues and connections to keep the reader engrossed in the story. This story has the added interest of Vera's own family background as the site of the crime is the country home where her father grew up and where other members of the Stanhope clan currently live. Vera cannot avoid unraveling some of her own connections and her own thoughts regarding family as she seeks to discover the solution to this crime. Readers familiar with the series will find renewed interest in Vera and her own life story along with continued intrigue as the team unravels and tracks each new clue.

In addition to being a terrific character-driven mystery with great plotting, THE DARKEST EVENING is a thoughtful exploration of family relationships. This time around, the murder is close to home for Vera, with the body of a new mother found on ancestral Stanhope grounds. The fact that Vera is only a distant relative to the owners doesn’t keep her from ruminating on the family connections. As the investigations wears on, the web of both family and community threads become more and more tangled. In this, the 9th in the series, Vera becomes more introspective as well as more vulnerable, making her a more sympathetic character than the brusque loner those who follow the series have come to know and love. While the background from previous books will help the reader understand Vera’s development, this book works well as a stand-alone and an entry into the series.

As always, Cleeves writes beautifully and lovingly of the British countryside and develops her characters so well that the reader feels as if they’ve actually met these people, while at the same time moving along a twisty plot. She is at the top of her game in this latest novel.

An enjoyable whodunnit set in Northumberland in England by the author who also wrote the Shetland series (both now a TV series). You can see this book being used for the TV series. A murder at a historic mansion, in a small farming community with all the local gossip and everyone knowing everyone. Vera is the DI with Holly and Joe working for her. An interesting team all with their own flaws. Mystery as to who the father of the victim's toddler son is. A good plot to take your mind off things.

Ah, a nice juicy Vera read! Just what my soul needed. When Very gets lost driving home in a blizzard, she comes across a car in a ditch, it's driver door open, and a toddler in his car seat abandoned. She takes the child and makes her way to the nearest lights--which turns out to be those of her ancestral home. THE DARKEST EVENING is one of Ann Cleeve's finest, with its tight plot, setting, and cast of interesting characters--not the least of whom is Vera herself. A work of literary art. Louise Penny recently said her own books are not about MURDER, but rather about RELATIONSHIPS. How true that is in THE DARKEST EVENING, as repeat characters expand and grow, and new characters change before our readerly eyes. A great instalment in the Vera series! Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur for an ARC of the novel.

Where would the world be without Vera Stanhope? We all need this sleuth in our lives! This go round Vera investigates the murder of a young woman whose body was found on the grounds of her ancestral home. Vera is estranged from that part of her family mainly due to her father’s personality and actions, and family politics make getting to the truth all the more difficult.

Ann Cleeves is a gifted writer who creates characters who quickly feel like old friends. I strongly recommend The Darkest Evening.

Loved this book! Enough twists and turns to keep me totally entertained and turning the pages late into the night. Highly recommend!
Thank you to netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I've only read a few Vera novels (I love the show though) and thought this one was her best yet. It was well-paced and not quite as dense as some of her other books (especially the debut) can be. The mystery was compelling and prickly Vera is always a treat.

“The Darkest Evening,” a Vera Stanhope novel takes the dedicated Ann Cleeves reader on another adventure set in the wilds of Northumberland in the UK. DCI Stanhope is an interesting character, as those previous readers know. This was my first read not only of a Stanhope character novel but the first of any of Cleeves’ books. I found the British version of our shared tongue to be interesting sometimes challenging, and found myself at times having to revert to the internet to determine what a word meant.

The language issue aside, I found the character development interesting and the interactions of the various characters entertaining. This is true whether the characters were in the village, manor house, or in Vera’s own office. There seemed to me to be too much discussion of Vera’s body type although there was little disparaging discussion of her ability to solve cases. Bad weather, distant relations, family issues from long ago as well as the more normal thing often found in murder mysteries—love spurned and parenthood denied. The countryside itself plays a role in the story and if one has ever visited this part of the United Kingdom it becomes a visceral part of the story. The cold winter weather near Christmas was almost a character itself. The reader could feel the cold both inside and outside.

I know lots of readers really like the novels by Cleeves but I found myself occasionally struggling to continue reading. It wasn’t that it was bad or overly boring; hard to put an exact name to my feeling. As they might say just “not my cup of tea.” I am glad I finished the book, both to find out who was the murder culprit but also so I can have something to offer when discussing these books with avid fans. For me it is a three star read, but I can see how others who enjoy the whodunit type of book to be very entertained. I appreciate #netgalley for providing the preview copy for an honest evaluation.

I read a Vera Stanhope novel a few years back and have been a fan of Ann Cleeves since. I was thrilled to receive an advanced copy of The Darkest Evening, the latest in the DCI Vera Stanhope series.

On a blistery cold winter night, Vera misses her turn and stumbles across a baby abandoned in a car. Calling it in, she interrupts a dinner party at a distant relative's house only for one of the guests to discover a dead body in the snow. The woman, Lorna, has been murdered, and together with her team, Vera must find out what happened to her while untangling decades-old secrets and lies at every turn.

Reading The Darkest Evening was a little like slipping into my coziest college sweatshirt--and not just because I spent two semesters immersed in Brit Lit seminars. This narrative was a good old-fashioned murder mystery; I even got a kick out of the meta moment when Vera realizes she could be in an Agatha Christie book, complete with vicar and country hillside motif. The cast is aloof and mysterious with well-developed motives and layers of mystery that propel the plot forward. Vera is so fun, an almost-retired detective battling her own body, insecurities, and others' judgments about her. She's smart, deductive, and witty, and I loved her voice most. Holly and Joe prove to be a useful, intelligent team, and the three of them together weave a complex, entertaining story spanning family histories, grudges, and classism.

Additionally, Cleeves highlights important issues of mental health, diving into Lorna's history with eating disorders and the psychology and treatment behind them. I can't remember the last time I read a thriller where anorexia played in the forefront as a serious medical condition, rather than an off-hand comment mentioned by a side character.

As a lifelong English major, I love when literary references show up in popular literature. Stopping by Woods is a timeless Frost poem, one I used to teach every year, and the allusion was an extra dip of enjoyment. I will say that if you're used to reading mysteries and thrillers set in America, it might take you a minute to adjust to the British lingo. Bairn, pet, and A levels threw me for the first few pages, but once you find your rhythm, the characters' voices will jump off the page. Some of the dialogue and diction were a bit repetitive, (repeatedly calling the victim a poor girl, referring to the case details, etc) but overall, The Darkest Evening is a quirky, quick read with well-developed characters and a fresh take on a classic whodunit.

Big thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for honest review consideration.

A snowy night, couple fighting to save the family estate, a veteran police officer, a baby and a dead body...what do they have in common, this book, The Darkest Evening. A not often encountered setting, rural England, set a immersive mood for this story and gave a break to the modern city setting of many current reads. I wouldn’t say if kept me up at night, but the suspense, pace and unique events kept me coming back for more of the story to be told. This is the first book I’ve read by Ann Cleese’s but I will definitely look forward to reading more from her.