The Raging Storm: A brilliant and tense mystery featuring Matthew Venn of ITV’s The Long Call from the Sunday Times bestselling author (Two Rivers)

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Ross is the baby of the team and feels like he is always in competition with Jen for Venn's attention. He thinks that his ideas often aren't listened to and is always trying to prove himself. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a great attention span. As ever, this is a carefully plotted crime novel from Cleeves, with the sea and the raging weather adding an extra thrill to an intriguing mystery. Venn, with the religious past he walked away from, is an excellent addition to her stable of detectives." By the time I reached the halfway mark, my interest was flagging. By the time I was three-quarters of the way through, I was wondering if I should just cut my losses and read something else. Here's the note I made at the time:

Until the following morning, when the coastguard received an emergency call from a fishing boat in difficulty, sheltering from the storm in the lee of Scully Head. Many thanks to both Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an early copy of The Raging Storm, by Ann Cleeves. It is the third book in the Two Rivers series. Expected publication: September 5, 2023. This isn’t a fast paced story. It’s a cerebral police procedural, expecting the reader to pay attention. This is a character driven story. Both the suspects and the team are fully developed individuals. My favorite police procedurals balance the mix of mystery to the team’s personal issues and this manages that mix perfectly. But now people walked past the house anyway, out of curiosity. They were interested to know if Jem Rosco’s mysterious visitor had arrived yet. They’d see the man sometimes looking out of the upstairs window, focused on the horizon, as if he was watching for a boat. Even in this stormy weather, a skilled sailor might float in and tie up at the jetty. There were two curved piers to shelter the narrow bay, built when stone from the quarry was carried out on big, flat barges. People said that one of his madcap adventuring friends would appear. Or the woman he was waiting for. Because most of the villagers had convinced themselves that it would be a woman.

Cleeves combines a flair for evoking sense of place with a thoughtful, complex plot -- Mail on Sunday on The Long Call As a huge fan of both the Shetland and Vera series of books, I had high expectations for Cleeves' latest. Matthew Venn is a keeper. A stunning debut for Cleeves' latest crimefighter -- David Baldacci on The Long Call I have been loving the Matthew Venn, Two Rivers, series and with The Raging Storm, Ann Cleeves has served up another atmospheric, mystery filled read that leads Venn and his team to the coastal town of Greystone after local hero and celebrity sailor, Jeremy Rosco, is found dead in a boat that is moored at an isolated cove. Venn knows Greystone from his childhood, from a meetings held by the Barum Brethren, and whilst not all of his memories are bad ones, it is enough to set him on edge. Finding out who would want to kill Rosco and why takes leads the team into an investigation where it is impossible to know who to trust, and with a killer who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.

For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and still enjoys working with libraries.

I was actually relieved to find that the audiobook ended earlier than I'd expected because the final chapter was an interview with the narrator. Instead of being called 'The Raging Storm' this should be titled 'Cloudy with Intermittent Showers'. The pace is slow. Even my curiosity is wilting. I have 147 minutes to go. I hope they're spent on one hell of a storm or this book will have been a waste of time." But the main flaw of THE RAGING STORM is that it is b-o-r-i-n-g. It took me from September 13 to the 20th to read it because I could only complete a few short chapters at one time before stopping to do something more interesting, like an iPad zigsaw puzzle. I finished it because I had hopes that it might turn around, and I had genuinely liked the first two novels in the series. It was a library book, so I had no financial incentive, but I had hope—now I doubt that I’ll ever read another novel in this series. Until the lifeboat is launched to a hoax call-out during a raging storm and his body is found in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.

As with Cleeves’ other series... place and people are as important here as plot." ―St. Louis Post-Dispatch Jem Rosco, a son of the village and a sailor and adventurer, suddenly returned to Greystone, staying in a local cottage, regaling locals with stories nightly in the pub and hinting of an upcoming rendezvous with some unknown person. A couple of weeks into his visit, Jem disappeared. Then an SOS call is received and a body is found in a dinghy off a cove. On the subject of the characters - Jen just becomes more likeable although even she is prone to petty jealousy at times but Ross takes the biscuit. I await the time he is consumed by his own pettiness that he either gets himself killed or lets a murderer go. Legendary sailor and TV personality, Jem Roscoe blows into Greystone, Devon during a September gale. He rents a cottage and says he’s there to meet someone, but he’s very mysterious and cagey about it. As a consequence, he interests and intrigues the small community and despite being an outsider, he soon becomes part of it. When he disappears, they’re at a loss. Later, following a distress call to the lifeboat, a body is found in a dinghy in very rough seas. Matthew and his partner DS Jen Rafferty are sent to Greystone to investigate.The third (after The Heron’s Cry) in Cleeves’s award-winning series is an atmospheric police procedural that builds on the other books while introducing fascinating suspects." ―Library Journal (Starred Review) He was in the Maiden’s every night after that. There was never a specific time. He’d appear suddenly, all smiles. Sometimes he’d stay at the bar, chinwagging with Harry. Other nights he’d drift around the room, landing at a table – the playgroup mums on their regular night out, or an elderly couple playing dominoes by the fire – like a piece of flotsam washed up by the tide. He was always friendly, always chatty, but he never really gave anything away. When anyone asked if the move to Greystone was permanent, or if he was there on a holiday, planning another journey perhaps, he’d only touch the side of his nose and grin.

This might sound ominous, and it sort of is. If you've read the previous books, you'll know, but basically, Matthew was raised in a very religious household; part of the Barum Brethren, who have many members living in Greystone. Well written, with strong character development, Cleeves will have you guessing throughout. Stressing characters and plot rather than action, this is an engrossing read that I didn’t want to put down. It is atmospheric and a bit claustrophobic due to the small, rather closed community and the constraints of the weather. But with the tide rising, secrets long-hidden are finding their way to the surface, and Vera and the team may find themselves in more danger than they could have believed possible . . . As the stormy winds howl and the village is cut off, Venn and his team start their investigation, little realizing their own lives might be in danger. . .The Raging Storm is the third in Ann Cleeves Two Rivers series featuring Matthew Venn, set in Devon in the north of England by the sea. In this outing, Venn and his team are called to the small, old village of Greystone to investigate a death, one that carries the hallmarks of murder. It was great to follow Venn, Sergeant Jen, Rafferty and Ross May. Well, not really Ross, he still gets on my nerves. But everyone else was great. I thought it was interesting about Jen's bad marriage being brought up again and some fly in the ointment on that. Also, Venn seems to be very careful of how he treats and talks to Jonathan after the mess he got into in the last book. Ross is trying to be better as an investigator, but seems to be sitting around fuming about thinking Jen is a favorite of Jen's. There are many people not willing to help Venn get to the truth in the investigation which slows things up. Ann Cleeves is at her ingenious best with the latest DI Matthew Venn crime novel, The Raging Storm.