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The 4:50 to Partington
Jan. 31st, 2020 08:27 pmBook Review: Harbour Street, by Ann Cleeves
I've never managed to catch the television series Vera, although I have an interest in things in general from the North East. Although I had the first book in the series on my Amazon wish list, when this one turned up on a book-swap shelf I thought I should take the opportunity.
It's number six in the series, and although I wonder whether I may be missing some background, it's sufficiently self-contained to make sense. I did find it initially a bit disorienting as the murder takes place in the run-up to Christmas on the Tyne & Wear Metro, halted by snow towards the end of the line near the Coast. As I grew up in Whitley Bay, this doesn't quite make sense as the North Tyne route is a loop, although I suppose it could have been in the direction of South Shields. But it wasn't too hard to set aside the fictional place names, even though they bugged me, trying to make sense of the mildly fake geography in a way that fictional Oxford colleges in Morse don't. We're thrust into the world of 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski, who had no known family, and who helped run a B&B in the house in which she had a flat, in the run-down small seaside town of Mardle. As the investigation proceeds, we discover piece by piece the odd and unusual threads of Margaret's intensely private past; predictably, it turns out that everyone has something to hide and no-one is quite who they seem to be. Although the investigation is driven by Vera Stanhope, Joe Ashworth is the principal sidekick, but it is a team effort. There are a number of twists and turns before the conclusion is reached. It's light (though dark) reading, and I enjoyed it, worth looking out for the other books and trying the TV series.
I've never managed to catch the television series Vera, although I have an interest in things in general from the North East. Although I had the first book in the series on my Amazon wish list, when this one turned up on a book-swap shelf I thought I should take the opportunity.
It's number six in the series, and although I wonder whether I may be missing some background, it's sufficiently self-contained to make sense. I did find it initially a bit disorienting as the murder takes place in the run-up to Christmas on the Tyne & Wear Metro, halted by snow towards the end of the line near the Coast. As I grew up in Whitley Bay, this doesn't quite make sense as the North Tyne route is a loop, although I suppose it could have been in the direction of South Shields. But it wasn't too hard to set aside the fictional place names, even though they bugged me, trying to make sense of the mildly fake geography in a way that fictional Oxford colleges in Morse don't. We're thrust into the world of 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski, who had no known family, and who helped run a B&B in the house in which she had a flat, in the run-down small seaside town of Mardle. As the investigation proceeds, we discover piece by piece the odd and unusual threads of Margaret's intensely private past; predictably, it turns out that everyone has something to hide and no-one is quite who they seem to be. Although the investigation is driven by Vera Stanhope, Joe Ashworth is the principal sidekick, but it is a team effort. There are a number of twists and turns before the conclusion is reached. It's light (though dark) reading, and I enjoyed it, worth looking out for the other books and trying the TV series.