In this second novel in the ‘Inspector Ramsay’ series, Ann Cleeves takes us back 33 years. Alice Parry is killed in her own backyard and the detective inspector investigates the murder.
Mrs Parry, a widow with no children, lived in a large home north of the village of Brinkbonnie. She was secretary of the Women’s Institute, organiser of the Village Horticultural Society and founding member of the Save Brinkbonnie Campaign. She was respected for her good works, yet she was killed on the Eve of St David’s Day.
Her two nephews, Max and James, and their families are staying for a few days. The house is able to accommodate the seven visitors comfortably. It is Max’s son, nine-year-old Peter who finds Mrs Parry’s body. Unfortunately, Inspector Ramsay postpones interviewing the child until later … much later.
As Ramsay investigates with the help of Detective Sergeant Gordon Hunter, village disputes are unearthed, family secrets tumble out, and another murdered body is discovered.
Ramsay is an ordinary chap who happens to be a policeman. Envy and jealousy surface as he interviews family members. He misses his ex-wife who is starting to offer gestures of friendship. He’s not a social animal and doesn’t make an effort to be friendly with his work colleagues. We get hints of why his wife left and found someone else.
Murder in My Backyard is a police procedural that takes a while to set the scene but, eventually, Ramsay gets results and we realise how cleverly the author has directed our attention away from a very plausible solution.
Reviewed by Clive Hodges
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon in the UK. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs – child care officer, women’s refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard – before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.
BOOKS
In 2006 Ann Cleeves was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers’ Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her ‘Shetland’ series. In addition, she has been short listed for a CWA Dagger Awards – once for her short story The Plater, and twice for the Dagger in the Library award, which is awarded not for an individual book but for an author’s entire body of work.
On 26 October 2017, Ann was presented with the Diamond Dagger of the Crime Writers’ Association, the highest honour in British crime writing.
Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 2007. A television adaptation of The Long Call, the first in Ann’s Two Rivers series set in North Devon, was broadcast in October 2021. Thirteen series of ‘Vera’, the ITV adaptation starring Brenda Blethyn, have been shown in the UK and worldwide: series 12 ended on an amazing 50th episode, based on Ann’s novel The Darkest Evening. A fourteenth series is promised for 2025. There have also been eight series of ‘Shetland’, based on – or inspired by – the characters and settings of her Shetland novels, and two further series have been announced, filming in 2024 and 2025.
She was awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours List, “for services to Reading and Libraries.”
In July 2023, during the opening ceremony for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, Ann was presented with the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution Award, in recognition of her impressive writing career.
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