Hidden Depths

I have been hooked on this series since the start. I did manage to start with the first book in the series this time. Seems my nontraditional way of moving through a series is starting with book three or so.

What I like about this series is the main character isn’t a polished, slender buxom know-it-all. You know the type, the super hero femme fatale detectives. No, Vera Stanhope is very bright but also damaged. Once you get into the books you’ll know her father Hector did a number on her. Her mother died when Vera was a child and Hector was an awful father figure. Dragging her off to the wilds for illegal harvesting of rare bird eggs, drinking to excess and leaving her to fend for herself, putting her down in regard to her looks and show more clumpiness. It’s a wonder she shaped up to be a such an outwardly strong character.

Beneath that hard shell she has her unguarded vulnerable emotions. They rarely make an appearance but you’ll glimpse that repressed soft side. She looks wistfully at families, at a mother pulling her daughter tightly to her in a loving embrace. And then she shakes it off and has a drink, doesn’t allow herself to wallow in what may have been. But I didn’t mean to start with a disection of Vera’s psychological baggage.

Book 3 – Hidden Depths. Julie Armstrong comes home from a well deserved night out with friends and finds her teen son Luke dead in the bathtub. He’s been murdered, placed him in the bath with floral bath oils and delicate flowers. Obviously Vera and her team arrive to investigate. Then another body is found in the same stylized manner. A beautiful young teacher is discovered in a rock pool, floating in the water with flowers surrounding her body. Serial killer or a copy cat killer? Enough twists in this one that I would have bet money on one particlar person as the killer but – I was completely off mark. That’s fun for me as a reader. show less

I have been hooked on this series since the start. I did manage to start with the first book in the series this time. Seems my nontraditional way of moving through a series is starting with book three or so.

What I like about this series is the main character isn’t a polished, slender buxom know-it-all. You know the type, the super hero femme fatale detectives. No, Vera Stanhope is very bright but also damaged. Once you get into the books you’ll know her father Hector did a number on her. Her mother died when Vera was a child and Hector was an awful father figure. Dragging her off to the wilds for illegal harvesting of rare bird eggs, drinking to excess and leaving her to fend for herself, putting her down in regard to her looks and show more clumpiness. It’s a wonder she shaped up to be a such an outwardly strong character.

Beneath that hard shell she has her unguarded vulnerable emotions. They rarely make an appearance but you’ll glimpse that repressed soft side. She looks wistfully at families, at a mother pulling her daughter tightly to her in a loving embrace. And then she shakes it off and has a drink, doesn’t allow herself to wallow in what may have been. But I didn’t mean to start with a disection of Vera’s psychological baggage.

Book 3 – Hidden Depths. Julie Armstrong comes home from a well deserved night out with friends and finds her teen son Luke dead in the bathtub. He’s been murdered, placed him in the bath with floral bath oils and delicate flowers. Obviously Vera and her team arrive to investigate. Then another body is found in the same stylized manner. A beautiful young teacher is discovered in a rock pool, floating in the water with flowers surrounding her body. Serial killer or a copy cat killer? Enough twists in this one that I would have bet money on one particlar person as the killer but – I was completely off mark. That’s fun for me as a reader. show less

This is the third book in the Vera Stanhope series, and I really enjoyed it as it's been awhile since I read one of these books. Ann Cleeves writes a literate and cerebral story, and Vera is a marvelous creation. Overweight, untidy, middlle-aged, cranky as all get out, but smart as a whip. That's our Vera. This book has Vera and her team trying to track down a killer who leaves his victims posed in the water with flowers all around them. First a young man with a learning disabiity is found drowned in his bathtub at home, and then a young woman is found in a millpond with the same type of staging. The cases are too similar to not be linked, but the victims don't seem to be linked together in any way. But Vera and Joe keep puzzling over show more it and over their list of suspects, looking for links and tie-ins, until they finally put it together. Ms. Cleeves does psychological suspense very well, and her books are literate and have good plots. But mostly she created Vera, and there is no one out there quite like her in all of crime fiction. show less

Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team are called to Northumberland where teenager, Luke Armstrong, is found dead in his bath by his mother, Julie. Julie at first assumes the boy, who had learning difficulties, had committed suicide, but Vera soon discovers that he has been murdered. When the body of another young woman, Lily Marsh, is found on the beach, having died in a similar fashion to Luke, Vera knows there must be some sort of connection. There are almost too many suspects at first, including four men who belong to a bird-watching group. Vera goes to see all the characters in turn, digging into their relationships and working out how their past or present secrets might be relevant.

The heart of this series is Vera. She's not the show more kind of procedural detective we have experienced in other mysteries. She is such a brilliant characters, overweight, almost beyond caring about her appearance, her diet or her excessive drinking. She stomps around and acts a bit stupid in order to convince the suspects they are smarter than she is. She reminds me quite a bit of Detective Columbo.

This mystery was an exquisite reading experience from beginning to end. I love the setting, the characters and the plot. show less

In the third Vera Stanhope mystery, two young people are murdered just days apart, and under eerily similar circumstances. But there are no apparent links between the two victims, and authorities are stymied. The first victim is a local boy who recently lost his best friend in a drowning. But who would want to kill him? The second victim is a young woman, new to the area, seemingly with no ties to anyone. As the investigation proceeds readers meet the boy’s family, a group of middle-aged male friends, and various other locals. Some are more suspicious than others, but no one seems to have a clear motive. Gradually, Vera makes the connections and cracks the case.

I have to admit I had my suspicions about the character who turned out to show more be the perpetrator: their personality made them a somewhat obvious choice. But the motive was less obvious, and I enjoyed the process of Vera getting to the bottom of things. show less

Vera is called into a case when a teen boy is found drowned in his bathtub. Vera and others wonders if it has anything to do with his best friend accidentally drowning months ago. When a young woman is found dead posed the same way, Vera starts to wonder if it ties into an amateur bird watching group.

I really enjoyed "Hidden Depths". Cleeves did a fantastic job of having Vera on the scene quite quickly in this one. We also get a chance to see into her "head" more in this one too. She's very good at her job, and is reluctant to allow others on her squad to do a lot without her input. I thought that Cleeves did a great job of allowing us to see mode depth with Vera wondering about a potential life she could have had if not for her show more father.

Cleeves offers up different points of view in this one with several characters, the divorced mother racked by grief (Julie Armstrong), and three separate men (Peter Calvert, Gary Wright, and Samuel Carr) who are part of the bird watching group, along with one of the men's wife (Felicity Calvert). We eventually see how things tie together in this one, and although it's a slow read, it's a satisfying one.

I do think Cleeves does a great job of showing how toxic personalities can shape a group or person (no spoilers) and loved the slightly unsatisfied ending in this one. I honestly wish the tv series had followed more of the book's plot since I thought it worked better. show less

Julie Armstrong has been for a 'night out with the girls' and arrives home, barely sober, to find her son Luke in the bath, apparently drowned, scented water and flowers floating on the surface. Whatever happened, her daughter Laura has slept through it all. Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbrian police, is the investigating officer. Soon there is a second body, this time young student teacher Lily Marsh. She too is found lying in a pool of water strewn with flowers but this time in an fairly inaccessible part fo the coastline. The subsequent investigation which Vera leads works rather like peeling back the layers of the onion, seeking the connections between the two deaths. And are they connected to an earlier drowning where show more mourners threw flowers onto the river where another young man died? This is #3 in the Vera Stanhope series: in tall, lumpy Vera Cleeves has almost created a female equivalent of Reginald Hill's Andy Dalziel. Perhaps that's being unkind to Vera, but she is every bit as clever, as intuitive. I intend to read the 2 earlier books, THE CROW TRAP (1999) and TELLING TALES (2005), to get better acquainted. show less