Book Review
Title The Heron’s Cry
Author Ann Cleeves
Publisher. Pan Macmillan
I enjoyed this from the beginning to its conclusion. It is sensitively written and included within these pages are topics that are the concern of communities everywhere. I am not saying what they are because that is for you to read and to find out.
The story is set in the rurality of North Devon where the locations are used skillfully and where they have significance and act as an important character too. Every death has to be investigated and here her three main detectives are so radically different and that causes a mixture of enjoyment, frustration and even irritation. Again she creates characters that are important not just to the plot but in making us like and even love them. Apart from the investigators there are other brilliant characters. Not all likable, of course.
There are themes to follow and the endings are complex and in addition to all that she wraps up those lose bits in the relations with her characters. And that is very well done.
I heard her in an interview where she stated that many of the relationships included in her work are ‘fractious’ - my words not hers - and where there this much conflict within. With Matthew Venn her lead investigator he is in a happy and supportive relationship and that is a change from the ‘usual cop at home in disharmony’ syndrome.
Tonight you can see the characters on the screen as ITV have taken them for their own interpretation of them and the plot. I shall watch but what is better than a book in the hand?
I try to read books that are different and even provide a challenge and I know what I can get from this superb writer. The Guardian proclaims ‘A traditional mystery of the best sort’ and it was an excellent change after reading Greg Buchanan’s ‘Sixteen Horses’ because that was a challenge.
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