A hot summer on the Northumberland coast, and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers.
This stylized murder scene has Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team intrigued. But then a second body - that of beautiful young teacher Lily Marsh - is discovered laid out in a rock pool, the water strewn with flowers. Now, Vera must work quickly to find this dramatist, this killer who is making art out of death.
Clues are slow to emerge from those who had known Luke and Lily, but Vera soon finds herself drawn towards the curious group of friends who discovered Lily's body. What unites these four men and one woman? Are they really the close-knit, trustworthy unit they claim to be? As local residents are forced to share their private lives and those of their loved ones, sinister secrets are slowly unearthed.
And all the while the killer remains in their midst, waiting for an opportunity to prepare another beautiful, watery grave ...
Hidden Depths is the third book to feature Inspector Vera Stanhope, yet Ann Cleeves told Shots Magazine that The Crow Trap (the first Vera Stanhope novel, now back in print) was originally intended as a standalone novel. But "I liked Vera Stanhope so much that I brought her back, first in Telling Tales and now in Hidden Depths. She developed because I was so cross with even feminist writers writing female central characters who were young, fit and beautiful. Vera isn't any of those things. She's overweight and middle-aged." - "more Nero Wolfe than V I Warshawski", as Jake Kerridge put it in The Telegraph!
ITV has now completed filming of Hidden Depths, under the title Vera, with Brenda Blethyn in the title rôle. ITV were so pleased with the pilot epidode, that they have commissioned three additional installments, even before the first episode has been broadcast. As a result, Vera will not now be broadcast until the spring of 2011.
"Ann Cleeves, winner of last year's inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger, is another fine author with a strong, credible female protagonist. Detective Vera Stanhope, a heavy-drinking, lumbering loner marooned in middle age, bears little resemblance to the traditionally fit and feisty detective who is such a familiar figure in the contemporary crime novel... Cleeves' particular skill is characterisation. Her characters range from affluent students to a spoiled woman filled with diffused sexual yearnings, from nurses to academics, from painfully doting parents to a group of middle-aged bird-watchers, all with their own secrets. It's a dark, interesting novel with considerable emotional force behind it."
Andrew Taylor, The Spectator
"Ann Cleeves improves with every book....
"Hidden Depths is a subtle, nuanced book and Cleeves draws her characters with care and compassion. The landscape of rural Northumberland is vividly evoked and Inspector Stanhope - overweight, fallible and driven by personal demons - is a terrific central character."
Tribune
"Cleeves sets a good scene, this time in Northumberland during a heatwave, and she brings a large cast to life, shifting points of view between bereaved relatives, victims and suspects in a straightforward, satisfyingly traditional detective novel."
Jessica Mann, The Literary Review
- Hidden Depths is published by Macmillan: order the hardback edition from Amazon, or from your local bookshop (quoting the ISBN: 978-1-4050-5473-7)
- It is also available in paperback: order the paperback from Amazon, or quote ISBN: 978-0330441155 to your local book shop.
- The Soundings Audio Book, read by Anne Dover, was published on 1st June 2007, available from the publisher on cassette or CD,
- and the Charnwood Large Print edition (ISBN: 978-1-84617-918-1) was published on 1st October.
- See the Foreign editions & translations page for other editions.
The Crow Trap | Telling Tales | This page: Hidden Depths | Silent Voices