Before Vera, before Jimmy Perez, and even before Inspector Ramsay, Ann Cleeves had Molly and George Palmer-Jones as amateur sleuths.
Molly Palmer-Jones arrives to visit her elderly aunt, Ursula Ottway, and finds her lifeless body lying on a well-used Chesterfield in the drawing room. Ursula’s doctor decides to order tests and a post-mortem. There is no obvious reason that would explain her death.
In a small community, gossip flourishes and Molly soon learns that Ursula had threatened to report the local squire and Member of Parliament, Marcus Grenville, to the authorities and the Press for using illegal baits to kill vermin on his estate. If found guilty, Grenville could wave good-bye to his parliamentary career. Before she could do so, however, she died.
George suggested to the police that toxicology samples taken during the post-mortem should be tested for phosdrin, the poison used in the baits.
Meanwhile, Molly has heard that Ursula was widely trusted and a good listener. People confided in her. Our intrepid investigator wondered if a villager had had regrets and had decided to silence the aunt. With Ursula gone, people start confiding in Molly.
Another Man’s Poison is a complex tale of secrets and lies. It is skilfully crafted with well-rounded characters and short chapters.
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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