I must confess to loving a police procedural series where you can get to know the main characters. Ann Cleeves’ ‘Vera’ and ‘Shetland’ series deliver this in spades. Now, the ‘Two Rivers’ series featuring Detective Matthew Venn is on this well-worn and successful path.

Set on the rugged coast of North Devon, the striking landscapes and unpredictable wild weather are as integral to the story as the characters themselves. Detective Matthew Venn returns to the village of Greystone with his team. The village is a familiar place from his childhood and continues to be a haven for the Barum Brethren, the religious community from which he is now estranged.

A local lifeboat crew were called out to a rescue in a ferocious storm and discovered the naked body of around-the-world sailor and documentary presenter, Jeremy Rosco, in a dinghy anchored tenuously in a cove known best to locals.

The original call is uncovered as a hoax and Venn and his colleagues become increasingly puzzled by the mysterious circumstances of Rosco’s death. As the storm closes in, they find themselves stranded, holed up in the local pub while they wait for it to pass and roads to clear. The locals become increasingly uncooperative as Venn and his team try to get to the truth.

In cutting off the team from the outside world, Cleeve uses a tried and tested ruse to ramp up the tension but the story is anything but hackneyed. The pelting rain distract and disarm Venn and his team, steering them off course, further distancing Venn from the new life and drawing him back to the past.

The Raging Storm is another worthy addition to the stable of excellent British police procedurals and a cracking good read.

Reviewed by Maryanne Vagg

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ann’s books have been translated into twenty languages. She’s a bestseller in Scandinavia and Germany.

Her novels sell widely and to critical acclaim in the United States. Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 2007. It has been adapted for radio in Germany – and in the UK where it was a Radio Times pick of the day when it was first broadcast Radio adaptations of Raven Black and White Nights have both been repeated.

A television adaptation of The Long Call, the first in Ann’s Two Rivers series set in North Devon, was broadcast in October 2021. Twelve series of Vera, the ITV adaptation starring Brenda Blethyn, have been shown in the UK and worldwide: series twelve ended on an amazing fiftieth eposode, based on Ann’s novel The Darkest Evening; there have also been seven series of Shetland, based on the characters and settings of her Shetland novels, and an eighth will be broadcast shortly.

Visit Ann Cleeves’ website