The series novels of Ann Cleeves, be they the ones featuring DI Jimmy Perez, the ones featuring DI Vera Stanhope, or those featuring Detective Matthew Venn, all have something in common that is extremely important to the veteran mystery reader. Readers know that the mystery to be solved by any of these fictional detectives is going to be every bit as intriguing as it is complicated – and readers who figure any of them out before Cleeves makes her big reveal near the end of each novel are to be congratulated. The Dark Wives, book number eleven in Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope series, is most certainly no exception to the rule.
It all starts when the body of a young volunteer at a home for troubled teens is found dead outside the building early one morning. When Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene she also learns that a fourteen-year-old resident of the home has not been seen since the previous evening. While others, including Vera’s favorite Detective Sergeant, Joe Ashworth, instinctively see the missing girl as suspect number one, Vera is not so sure. Her gut tells her that the young girl is more likely to be victim than villain. Whether the investigation proves her right or not remains to be seen.
So here we have the makings of another solid Vera Stanhope novel. However, what really makes an Ann Cleeves novel so good these days is the special care that Cleeves uses each time out to further develop the emotional evolution of her recurring series characters. As The Dark Wives opens, Vera is still struggling to cope with the loss of of a female officer whose death she blames herself for. But even now, despite being determined to be more open with her staff – and less rash about placing herself in harm’s way without backup – Vera keeps falling back on her old habits.
Joe Ashworth, personally closer to Vera than anyone else in the department, can’t help but notice and worry about Vera’s struggles, so when the flashy new investigator Rosie Bell shows up to begin her first day on the team, Joe is not quite sure what to expect. Rosie is very different from her predecessor, so different, in fact, that Joe begins to feel a little threatened by her presence after Vera starts to show her what Joe can’t help but feel is special treatment at his own expense.
As one thread after another is yanked on by the investigators, shocking as the results often are, it all starts to make perfect sense to Vera. But even when she is almost certain that she knows the identity of those behind everything that went wrong at the teen refuge, Vera still has to prove it. So has she learned to share her theories with the rest of the team yet…or will she make the same mistakes she made last time?
