The Darkest Evening

This 9th installment in Ann Cleeves' "Vera Stanhope" series includes a lot of information about Vera's background since the murder occurs on the grounds of the Stanhope estate, the property of her dead father's older brother, which is now inhabited by his widow, daughter and son-in-law. This is a part of Vera's family that she only sees for weddings and funerals. Vera's father, Hector, was the black sheep of the family and on the few occasions that they visited, "the family had been unfailingly polite. That branch of the clan used politeness as a weapon of mass destruction." I'd love to have had a map of the estate with its tenant farms and tied cottages. 

Caught in a blizzard while driving home one night, DI Stanhope misses a turn  and comes across a car on the side of the road with the driver's door still open and a toddler in the back seat. She assumes the driver has gone looking for help after sliding off the road so she leaves a note, takes the little boy, and starts looking for the nearest signs of life and cell reception. That just happens to be the Stanhope home, Brockburn, where her father grew up. Inside, the son-in-law is entertaining potential donors for a theatre start-up. When the body of a young woman--the abandoned car's driver-- is shortly discovered by a tenant farmer coming to retrieve his daughters who are filling in as wait staff, Vera realizes that she has a murder on her hands. "...a second murder spurs Vera and her team to investigate a tangled web of family connections and buried secrets'" (Kirkus). "Vera... comes to realize that the 'whole case... was about families, about what held them together and what ripped them apart" (Publishers Weekly).

As is to be expected, the characters are well-developed, the settings rich and the plot twisty with a number of red herrings thrown in. Still, Publishers Weekly concludes, "This fair-play mystery brims with fully developed suspects and motives that are hidden in plain sight. Skillful misdirection masks the killer's identity. This page-turner is must reading for fans as well as newcomers." Kirkus likewise closes their review with "Fans will enjoy matching wits with Cleeves’ eccentric sleuth right up to the dangerous surprise in her denouement." Highly recommended