The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope)

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The fatal stabbing of 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski on a train car filled with Christmas shoppers propels British author Cleeves’s excellent sixth mystery featuring Northumbrian Det. Insp. Vera Continue reading » Vera, present in a personal capacity, calls in the local police and her colleagues from CID. Those present at Writer's House at the time of the murder are rounded up and all but a handful eliminated from the enquiry for logistical reasons. The remaining suspects or witnesses include Miranda, the owner of the house and business; her son Alex; a retired policeman now hoping to be a published author; a young man who has discovered a writing talent while in prison; an elderly famous crime writer who is teaching on the course; and another teacher, Nina, an academic and aspiring writer. By the process of elimination, one of these people, or Joanna, must have committed the crime – though there is the outside chance that a random stranger could have gained access. Faint feelings of guilt notwithstanding, Vera takes some personal time for her solo investigation. “She felt the wonderful liberation of a truant,” as she takes in views of the bay and steep valleys. The setting of the Vera Stanhope novels in the “windswept coastal villages and rolling moors of Northumberland” is another hook for dedicated readers. If you like the TV series, you're in for a treat - because the atmospheric but realistic books are even better." A series of fictional plots are pressed into service as blueprints for real-life crimes at a writers’ retreat.

THE GLASS ROOM | Kirkus Reviews

Vera finds the writer’s retreat and— surprise, surprise—she’s just in time for murder. “Academic, reviewer and arts guru” Professor Tony Ferdinand is dead. A woman was discovered outside the glass-walled “first-floor conservatory” where he was killed with “a knife in her hand.” Northumbrian Det. Insp. Vera Stanhope makes her winning U.S. debut in this mildly chaotic police procedural, the fourth entry in a series that’s the basis for Vera, a British TV crime show now Continue reading »Clarts? Free Dictionary says, “ dialect Scot and Northern English lumps of mud, esp on shoes.” The setting of the Vera Stanhope stories—Northumberland, England’s northernmost county—lends itself to regional dialect. Note also Vera’s unsparing description of herself: “great fat Cupid in wellies” is one of her milder self-portraits. Cleeves is very obviously having a little postmodern fun at the expense of her more pretentious peers... a solid and enjoyably old-fashioned police-procedural yarn" Fans of the Vera Stanhope novels already available in the U.S., as well as the TV series Vera, will welcome Cleeves’s intricate series opener (first published in 1998), which introduced the Continue reading »

The Glass Room - Macmillan The Glass Room - Macmillan

The Glass Room is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera.

The Glass Room is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series - now the major ITV detective drama Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn. THE GLASS ROOM is a traditional, Agatha Christie-style book, relying on gradual unearthing of untold relationships and past actions among a small group, rather than on modern technology or details of police procedure. There are a couple of early clues that the police don't follow up, but once the detectives gather momentum it is clear that Vera is getting to grips with all the complexities and will work it out eventually – without recourse to the "messages" the criminal is leaving, which in the end turn out to have gone over everyone's heads (will readers spot the references, I wonder?). A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. From Ann Cleeves— New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—comes The Glass Room. A prison outreach leads to a meeting between Vera Stanhope and John Brace, a now-incarcerated corrupt former police superintendent, in Diamond Dagger Award–winner Cleeves’s engrossing eighth mystery Continue reading »