Harbour Street

Starred review from October 12, 2015
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 Stanhope (after 2012’s The Glass Room). While some members of Vera’s team deal with the difficult task of identifying possible witnesses and suspects aboard the train, she and Sgt. Joe Ashworth, her protégé, begin the task of learning more about the victim, who lived in the seaside village of Mardle. The secretive Margaret resided at the Harbour Guest House, where she was almost part of owner Kate Dewar’s family. Cleeves expertly handles the interplay among Vera—outsized both in stature and personality—her staff, and the villagers. In addition to the series’s compelling regulars, the cast includes such brilliantly realized minor characters as Kate and Jane Cameron, who runs the Haven, a hostel for homeless women. You don’t have to be a fan of the TV show Vera, now filming its fifth season, to enjoy this top-notch police procedural. Agent: Moses Cardona, Inkwell Management.

October 1, 2015
A murder on the Metro presents a fifth case for a police inspector as smart as she is charmless. As Joe Ashworth waits to leave a rapid-transit train crowded with holiday shoppers, he realizes that for one passenger, stabbed to death en route from Newcastle, there'll be no more Christmases. Joe and his boss, Inspector Vera Stanhope, have to take the unhappy news about the victim, 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski, to Kate Dewar, who owns the Harbour Guest House in a dingy waterfront town at the end of the Metro line. Margaret had been living in the house long before Kate left behind her career as a singer to buy it, and the older woman stayed on as an employee and honorary grandmother to Kate's two children. Although Vera's supposed to supervise the case from her office, her love of digging into other people's lives, perhaps because she has no personal life of her own, sends her door to door along with Joe and her other subordinates to ask questions about the proper, private victim, who had something to hide beyond her recent cancer diagnosis. Nor are the people who were the last to see her]a traveling book salesman, a local owner of a charter boat, a biology professor, even Kate's lover]entirely honest with the detectives. When someone stabs a young prostitute Margaret had befriended, Vera finds the proof she needs that the girl's death and Margaret's are linked to the guesthouse, the boatyard, the local pub on Harbour Street, and to events from years ago. Then the chance recollection of one of Kate's old songs warns the team that if they don't act fast, they may have another murder, closer to home, on their hands. Even though you may wish you could prod Cleeves (Dead Water, 2014, etc.) to pick up the leisurely pace, the complexities of the people and plot make the wait worthwhile.

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November 1, 2015
Margaret Krukowski, stabbed on a crowded Newcastle Metro train just before Christmas, is an unlikely murder victim. The refined and stylish elderly woman, whose Polish husband disappeared early in their marriage, was a longtime resident and helper at Harbour Guest House, where proprietor Kate Dewar considered her one of the family, and a dedicated volunteer at the local women's shelter. As they investigate, Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope and her protege, Detective Joe Ashworth, find that the people of the south Northumberland town of Mardleincluding Krukowski herselfkeep secrets, often for decades, and sidestep the truth. The murder days later of prostitute Dee Robson, who had been befriended by Krukowski, intensifies the search for answers, as parallels are found between the two women and suspicion grows that the same person is responsible. Even the intuitive Stanhope hits some dead ends before she and Ashworth reach the same conclusion as suspense builds toward the climax. This sixth in the Vera Stanhope series (after Silent Voices, 2013) is a classic whodunit with the dogged Stanhope, like an overweight female Columbo, solidly at its core.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 15, 2015

The sixth in Cleeves's series (The Glass Room), which is the basis for the hit public television series Vera starring Brenda Blethyn, finds DI Vera Stanhope and Det. Joe Ashworth chasing a murderer shortly before Christmas. Joe's daughter, Jessie, discovers the fatally stabbed Margaret Krukowski on the Metro. By all appearances Margaret was a kind and elegant lady, so who would want to kill her? It's not long before Margaret's friend is also found murdered. As a fresh blanket of snow covers the town, Joe and Vera try to unearth the many dark secrets of Harbour Street's residents. VERDICT Cleeves offers up evocative settings and flawed characters with depth, making her mysteries wonderfully addictive. Her latest is no exception. [See Prepub Alert, 6/8/15.]

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2015

Malice Domestic Honored International Visitor in 2015, Cleeves won the first Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for Raven Black; nonreaders (anyone here?) still know her from Vera, the Netflix show based on her Vera Stanhope series, now filming its fifth season. Here, DI Stanhope avoids the holiday festivities by rushing to a Metro station in (fictitious) Northumberland, where an elegant woman has been found stabbed to death in one of the train cars. Just days after Vera launches an investigation with Det. Joe Ashworth (fortuitously, on the same train with daughter Jessie), a second woman dies, and the clues keep leading to Harbour Street, whose residents are surprisingly uncooperative.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015

The sixth in Cleeves's series (The Glass Room), which is the basis for the hit public television series Vera starring Brenda Blethyn, finds DI Vera Stanhope and Det. Joe Ashworth chasing a murderer shortly before Christmas. Joe's daughter, Jessie, discovers the fatally stabbed Margaret Krukowski on the Metro. By all appearances Margaret was a kind and elegant lady, so who would want to kill her? It's not long before Margaret's friend is also found murdered. As a fresh blanket of snow covers the town, Joe and Vera try to unearth the many dark secrets of Harbour Street's residents. VERDICT Cleeves offers up evocative settings and flawed characters with depth, making her mysteries wonderfully addictive. Her latest is no exception. [See Prepub Alert, 6/8/15.]

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.