The Long Call

by Ann Cleeves

Snappy Review

If you’re putting this off because it’s not Shetland or Vera, don’t! It’s a great new series, with a character that you may not warm to at the first, but whose amazing vulnerability and insecurity gives him a greater authenticity. The crime is creepy, the setting is magnificent and I only wish it were longer!

Book Synopsis

In North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, he lost his family too.

Now he’s back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region; a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose.

A body has been found on the beach near to Matthew’s new home: a man with the tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

Finding the killer is Venn’s only focus, and his team’s investigation will take him straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.

The Long Call, the first book in a stellar new series by the UK’s Queen of Crime, has been optioned for TV by Silverprint, the production company behind Vera and Shetland.