Jem Rosco, well known local sailor and all round good guy, rolls into Greystone, Devon, but when he leaves without saying anything, no one is worried. That’s just the way he operates. That is, until his body is found in a dinghy off the coast of Scully Cove, a mysterious island with its own myths and secrets. It’s also where the religious sect live, that Det Venn was raised in and later excommunicated from. Can he see the case clearly through his personal feelings or will what he knows about the area cloud his judgement? And when a storm blows in, are he and his team in danger?

I want to wear a chunky cable knit sweater just reading the blurb of this book. A storm is coming in, there’s a weird religious community, an isolated island and a murder mystery. Ann Cleeves knows what she’s doing and we are once again in good hands. If you’re trying to place her, Cleeves is the author of the Vera and Shetland (Jimmy Perez) UK crime series, as well as this one, which is the Two Rivers series (The Long Call is the TV adaptation).

This is the third in this series. Here we have Matthew Venn as our lead detective. He’s a gay man in a stable relationship, a member of his local small community in Devon, and he left the Barum Brethren community that he was raised in, so his tension with his family and moral upbringing are part of the background in this series, which I find really interesting. I really like Matthew Venn as a lead and as a detective. He feels complex and natural, and I like the way he developes and grows with each book in the series. His religious background makes me so curious in this series. There’s something a bit toxic and culty about it, and I love that we get a little more into that part of his story here.

There are some great mystery plots and premises in this series. And this one really drew me in. When I was a kid reading The Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, I always loved the ones set on an island. You know your characters are far from help, they’re isolated. Which is part of the fun, you’re getting away from it all, but you’re also further away from help, from civilisation perhaps. Cleeves really is a master of place, giving us such good locations and so much Britishness for these books. Her leads are shaped by the places they live, by the social rules of the community, by the way the landscape and climate impacts communication, travel, the kinds of work people do, and how well they know each other. Solving a murder in a small place, where everyone knows everyone, where the investigators know the people involved and are maybe biased by that for good or ill, and how there are so many secrets in small towns and villages, and where history isn’t forgotten. In all these ways, this book is a treat.

Read It If: Storms, islands, incoming tides, and the Barum Brethren all make for a great backdrop. This book has an interesting solution to the mystery, not an easy one to guess, and is very entertaining with it’s twists and turns along the way. A great series.

Thanks to PGC Books for the copy of this book for review.