Ann Cleeves in fine form in new Venn mystery

Some friendships are toxic. In Ann Cleeves’ fourth mystery in her Two Rivers series, it proves to be fatal.

Hannah and Lottie are teenage school chums with little in common. And on a summer holiday in North Devon, their differences leads to one found dead and the other missing.

Detective inspector Matthew Venn and his team, consisting of the straight-talking Jen and the ambitious Ross, have their hands full as each partial answer only leads to more questions.

Lottie, found dead in a swimming pool, was headstrong, pampered and entitled. Hannah, who can’t be found, was hesitant and looking to Lottie to lead the way in adventures and risk taking.

Cleeves is a master at wrapping a mystery in an enigma, and it’s up to the reader to unwrap the shroud and add each new revelation to the information already provided.

All the families in The Dying Light have something to hide. Hannah’s father is a government minister with a questionable background. Lottie’s mother is a fashion plate of little substance.

Then there are the locals: the pub owners at the Fisherman’s Arms, with their knowledge of locals and visitors, and the farm family with their son Jake, who was smitten with Hannah, though they grew up in different worlds.

Finally there is a wild card in the form of an American couple, the Kinzalows. Their daughter Elizabeth, studying in England, was the third teenager in the trio of chums, until a risk led to her permanent disability. Her parents were never satisfied with the police investigation into the accident.

As always, the location is a major feature of Cleeves’ story. The author grew up in the area of North Devon, and knows its flora and fauna. It doesn’t carry the weight of some of Cleeves’ other series — her Vera books, set in Northumberland, or the Shetland series where the setting is a character in itself (and for a tiny northern Scottish island, there are more murders per square acre then anywhere else on Earth) — but you’ll want to visit from the descriptions.

Readers of the previous three novels in this series may find themselves disappointed in Venn. We know he grew up in a restrictive cultish faith that he rejected after university, and then found his mother blamed him for his father’s death because Venn married a man.

Here in the fourth book, Venn is now finally comfortable enough in his own skin to walk out of the bath without any clothes on. He still seems unsure of his husband Jonathan, although we don’t know why.

As always in a Cleeves mystery, there is suspicion of wealth and position, and of course the higher-ups always have political reasons for their demands to have the case solved as soon as possible — along with not-so-subtle pressures.

TV fans will note that many more episodes of Vera and Shetland were produced than the single series based on the first Venn book. Stay tuned.

Ron Robinson has watched the Vera and the Shetland series… numerous times.