{"id":5158,"date":"2023-08-28T12:51:13","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T19:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5158"},"modified":"2023-08-28T12:51:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T19:51:13","slug":"ann-cleeves-the-raging-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/ann-cleeves-the-raging-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann Cleeves: The Raging Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Rivers #3<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ann Cleeves goes from strength to strength.\u00a0 The third novel in her Matthew Venn series finds Matthew investigating a crime in a village he\u2019d visited as a child. The book opens with the raging storm of the title, and no one is better than Ann Cleeves at setting the stage using nature as a backdrop.\u00a0 The coastal town where the story takes place gets a \u201ccallout\u201d \u2013 the volunteer coast guard heads out to see what\u2019s up with an abandoned boat in the middle of a storm.\u00a0 They find the boat, and inside, the body of a man.<\/p>\n

The man turns out to be a well known adventurer and sailor, Jem Roscoe, who had grown up in the area and left to make his name and fortune, sailing around the world.\u00a0 The village as a whole seems to be proud of him, mystified as to why he was renting a cottage in the area, and completely flummoxed as to the reason for his death though many remember him as a braggart. The only clue comes from an observant bird watcher, but beyond this clue, the police are as puzzled as anyone else.<\/p>\n

What Cleeves does as well as any writer alive is peel back layers and delve deep into character.\u00a0 Not only does she illuminate the characters of Matthew and his team, Jen and Ross, but the characters of almost everyone in the tiny village. Matthew is happily married to Jonathan, a suitable arrangement of opposites.\u00a0 Matthew is careful and rule abiding; Jonathan is an outgoing creative spirit.\u00a0 The two balance each other.\u00a0 Jen is a single mother, raising two pretty self sufficient kids and beating herself up about the lack of time she\u2019s able to spend with them.\u00a0 Ross is the enthusiastic puppy of the group \u2013 needing to be reined in and learning to be careful in his investigations.<\/p>\n

The three of them end up in Greystone to investigate Jem\u2019s death, and thanks to the storm, they\u2019re stuck as downed trees cut the village off.\u00a0 No one on the team are too pleased about this (for different reasons) but they set up headquarters in the village pub \u2013 shades of Roderick Alleyn! \u2013 and settle in for the long haul.\u00a0 When another death occurs the detectives are certain the two are linked, though there seems to be no reason why they would be.<\/p>\n

Jem, as they continue to look into him, appears to have been a careless man \u2013 careless of his relationships, his life details, and leaving a wake of what I would call annoyed-near-heartbreak behind him.\u00a0 The slow unraveling of his character is one of the treats of the novel, as is the nature saturated investigation taken on by Venn\u2019s team.\u00a0 As this is Ann Cleeves, there are both heartbreaking details of the lives of the people in the village, as well as the natural world playing it\u2019s part in the story. You almost feel you are on the edge of the ocean, a place, Cleeves makes clear, dangerous and unpredictable as well as beautiful.<\/p>\n

This is an extremely strong entry in this series, and the denouement, with the path of clues laid carefully by this intelligent writer, providing both a shock and a righteous feeling of \u2013 of course! \u2013 on the part of the reader.\u00a0 An all around lovely read. —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Rivers #3 Ann Cleeves goes from strength to strength.\u00a0 The third novel in her Matthew Venn series finds Matthew investigating a crime in a village he\u2019d visited as a child. The book opens with the raging storm of the title, and no one is better than Ann Cleeves at setting the stage using nature … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[197,6,1318,199,1277,406,1317,1316,808,1315],"class_list":["post-5158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-ann-cleeves","tag-british","tag-character-development","tag-matthew-venn","tag-minotaur","tag-nature","tag-seaside","tag-the-raging-storm","tag-traditional-detective-series","tag-two-rivers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5221,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158\/revisions\/5221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}