THE LONG CALL

 

 The Long Call
By Ann Cleeves
Minotaur Books

     The awesome Ann Cleeves introduces a new character in her latest can't-put-down mystery.  He is Detective Matthew Venn, a complex but winning character whom we first meet as he stands outside his father's funeral.  He's not welcome there as he's no longer a member of the Barum Brethern into which he was born.  Matthew had publicly withdrawn from the group which shamed his mother and distanced her.  Had that not been enough Matthew is now married to Jonathan and happily so.

     Soon we are introduced to Maurice Braddick, the widowed father of 30-year-old Lucy who has Down's Syndrome.  She spends her days at Woodyard, a center for adults with learning disabilities.  The elder Braddick keeps going to the window watching for Lucy to come walking up the path from the bus stop.  eventually she does but is unhappy because "The man wasn't on the bus today."  It seems a man has usually boarded the bus, sat next to Lucy and given her sweets.  Her father questions her concerned that the man might have harmed her, but that was not the case.

     Matthew's fellow detective is Jen, the divorced mother of two, and a perfect counterpoint for Matthew.  She loved her children and sometimes worried about not spending enough time with them
but work gave her life structure and meaning.  Cleeves has a remarkable gift and that is somehow with her words making readers care about the characters, be they good, bad or in between.  She slowly, carefully unrolls her story making it impossible to top turning pages, especially when a dead body is found on the beach and identified as Simon Andrew Walden, a volunteer at Woodyard.  Walden has been murdered, a brutal stab in the back.

     As her story unfolds Cleeves reveals secrets in the lives of her characters which kept this reader up until the wee hours of the morning.  Sorry when the story was over I turned the last page ever so grateful to the  amazing Cleeves for another remarkable journey.