Ten years ago Abigail Mantel died. In what appeared to be an open and shut case, her murderer Jeanie Long was quickly identified and charged. To some people in the East Yorkshire village of Elvet, Jeanie had seemed an unlikely culprit, but even her father believed she was guilty. Now, after years of protesting her innocence, Jeanie has committed suicide in prison, and someone has come forward to give her an unshakeable alibi for the time of the murder. So the killer, probably a local, is still at large, and Inspector Vera Stanhope comes to the village to seek the truth.

She has an advantage - Dan Greenwood, local craftsman, is a former copper whom she has worked with, and he was on the Mantel murder case. For one of Abigail's friends, Emma Bennett, who discovered Abigail's body the past comes back.

Ann Cleeves tells us that TELLING TALES is set in a fictitious landscape east of Hull, but that doesn't stop it from feeling very real. Vera Stanhope is an almost larger than life character, gruff, with a way of winkling confidences from people, and a little unorthodox in her methods. She has that attribute of all good detectives, the ability to make the intuitive leap, to see past what she is being told, to admit when she has made a mistake, and finally to come up with the goods. ( )