The Heron’s Cry- Ann Cleeves

Thank you so much, @minotaur_books , for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion. The Heron’s Cry will be available for purchase 9/7.

A young glassblower named Eve is destroyed to find her father, Dr. Yeo, stabbed to death in her art studio. She is even more gobsmacked when she discovers the murder weapon protruding from her father’s neck to be a shard of glass from a vase of her own creation.

Detective Matthew Venn and his team are quickly on the case to try to find this killer and their motive behind taking the life of a seemingly well-liked man and upstanding member of society who at the time of his death, had been investigating a suicide of a young man.

Venn quickly discovers how he has stumbled upon a case that yet again entangles with his personal life and that of one of his team members’, Jen Rafferty. He’ll soon find out whether or not this helps or hurts his investigation.

It’s not long before a potential suspect is found dead and the race is on to get to the bottom of this case before the killer has the opportunity to strike again.

Venn’s writing is truly binge-worthy. She has an incredible gift of writing a large cast of characters and giving them each their very own unique voice. She understands the complexities of human nature and uses it to masterfully draw you in to the inner-workings and incentives of these characters. I enjoyed this cast because with more characters, possibilities for suspects open up and I love to be kept guessing until the end.

This is how wonderfully unpredictable Venn’s writing is: I had accidentally lost my place while reading and thought I was further along in the book than I was. It wasn’t until a few sentences in, that I came across a sentence convinced me that killer had been revealed. Disappointed, I continued to read along. Imagine my surprise when the murderer turned out to be someone different entirely than I had thought, despite the seeming spoiler. That was an epic surprise!

I was thrilled that lovable characters from the previous book, The Long Call, made an appearance. I am particularly fond of a strong, lovable, young woman with Down’s Syndrome named Lucy who played an integral part in solving Venn’s previous case.

I look forward to the next installment in The Two Rivers series and the soon to be TV adaptation!

𓇼 𓇼 𓇼 𓇼.5 (4.5/5 starfish)

Trigger Warning: murder, suicide