The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope)

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An interesting thing happens to Joe in this novel: he finds himself attracted to Nina Backworth, a woman involved in the case that he and Vera are investigating. Cleeves, author of The Mill on the Shore, turns what should have been a quiet birdwatching holiday in Texas into a multiple crime scene, with new bodies discovered almost daily. These misgivings are the reason for the phrase 'not quite a classic' in the heading of the review - and also the reason for awarding four stars rather than five.

The Glass Room: A Vera Stanhope Mystery (Vera Stanhope, 5) The Glass Room: A Vera Stanhope Mystery (Vera Stanhope, 5)

From CWA Diamond Dagger Award winner Ann Cleeves comes The Glass Room, the fifth book in the Vera Stanhope series, published for the first time in the US. From the 'puzzle' standpoint this makes for a very satisfying read, but there can be an element of friction between puzzles and procedurals.Ann Cleeves is always scrupulously fair in the construction of her plots; clues are seeded throughout the storyline and it's always possible to work out the likely killer - or it would be if we could only identify the clues and realise their significance! In the procedural, police investigators are the lead players and the novel is structured to reflect police procedures which, if not always accurate, are at least broadly credible. If you like the TV series, you're in for a treat - because the atmospheric but realistic books are even better. But when she arrives she is plunged straight into a murder scene in the titular glass room, with Joanna the prime suspect.

The Glass Room: A Vera Stanhope Novel 5 : Cleeves, Ann The Glass Room: A Vera Stanhope Novel 5 : Cleeves, Ann

The police find that the evidence that seemed to incriminate Joanna in fact does not, so she is released and the course uneasily continues while the police examine the background and history of all their suspects (including Joanna of course). By the process of elimination, one of these people, or Joanna, must have committed the crime – though there is the outside chance that a random stranger could have gained access. AC, as usual, creates vivid imagery around the setting and includes interesting character interactions and internal dialogue along the way. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Her innate self-honesty has Vera quickly remembering times that “Jack and Joanna had dug the snow from the track so that she could get down the hill to work,” nights she’d pilfered a homebrew or two from their house, and “evenings of good food” and laughter.Hearing too his wife’s voice in his head: That woman’s a ghoul – the delight she takes in other people’s misery. THE GLASS ROOM is a traditional, Agatha Christie-style book, relying on gradual unearthing of untold relationships and past actions among a small group, rather than on modern technology or details of police procedure. She’s a geography teacher and he’s a restaurateur, though the pandemic has made it really hard to keep a business afloat in the latter industry. During the investigation we learn more about Joanna and Jack and how they came to seek a simpler lifestyle. Since 2011, Detective Chief Inspector Stanhope has been portrayed by actor Brenda Blethyn in the popular ITV series Vera.

Review: The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves - Criminal Element Review: The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves - Criminal Element

This approach has become increasingly popular in recent years, led by characters such as Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, Ian Rankin's DI Rebus and John Harvey's Charlie Resnick. When she comes home to her remote farm one October evening, laden with grocery bags, her door is unlocked. Vera may be fat and prone to wearing shapeless cardies and ugly sandals on her man sized feet but she's an astute observer of people.

There are a couple of early clues that the police don't follow up, but once the detectives gather momentum it is clear that Vera is getting to grips with all the complexities and will work it out eventually – without recourse to the "messages" the criminal is leaving, which in the end turn out to have gone over everyone's heads (will readers spot the references, I wonder? Things get complicated when a body is discovered and Vera’s neighbour is found with a knife in her hand. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. THE GLASS ROOM is a chatty, relaxing read rather than a cutting-edge slice of noir, with a well-constructed crime plot that will please the many fans of Vera.

THE GLASS ROOM | Kirkus Reviews

The setting of the Vera Stanhope novels in the “windswept coastal villages and rolling moors of Northumberland” is another hook for dedicated readers. People had been putting together stories of death and motives for killing since the beginning of them, to thrill and to entertain. In black and gold and a bright arsenic green, this is undeniably one of the best-looking books about true crime to ever grace my desk.The Glass Room is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - which is now a major TV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera. On her final visit to the island in 2002, the Queen visited a development project in Trench Town, a low-income neighbourhood in the capital, Kingston, that’s considered the birthplace of reggae. He gets his back up, but when she flatly says, “You picked up Joanna Tobin two days ago,” he says, “Aye, that’s right. To supply more detail would be unfair to the prospective reader, but Vera and her trusty sidekick DS Joe Ashworth quickly take the case in hand and, inevitably, all is not as it seems.