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The Long Call: A Detective Matthew Venn Novel (Matthew Venn series, 1) Hardcover – September 3, 2019
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
NOW A BRITBOX SERIES STARRING BEN ALDRIDGE AND PEARL MACKIE
The Long Call from Ann Cleeves―bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows―introduces the first in the stunning Matthew Venn series.
“In Matthew Venn, Ann has created a complex, daring, subtle character.” ―Louise Penny
"Matthew Venn is a keeper. A stunning debut for Cleeves’ latest crimefighter."―David Baldacci
In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father’s funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.
Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.
The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed, and his new life is forced into a collision course with the world he thought he’d left behind.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMinotaur Books
- Publication dateSeptember 3, 2019
- Dimensions6.29 x 1.19 x 9.38 inches
- ISBN-101250204445
- ISBN-13978-1250204448
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- He was a man who’d turned his personal likes and dislikes into a moral code; because he didn’t enjoy spending money in the Woodyard cafe, there was something morally suspect about the people who did. The Brethren had been much the same. Matthew thought they’d created a God in their own image, hard, cold and inflexible.Highlighted by 260 Kindle readers
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Editorial Reviews
Review
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller!
A Library Journal Best Book of 2019
A September 2019 LibraryReads pick!
A St. Louis Post Dispatch Best Book of 2019
One of Aunt Agatha's Best Books of 2019
"Cleeves's true strength lies in her descriptions of the natural world, gorgeously captured."―New York Times Book Review
"Cleeves' acclaimed Shetland series may be history, but her newest detective―buttoned-up, gay, married, ex-evangelical Matthew Venn―is a righteous successor."―People
"The plotting is complex and intriguing, the location comes alive, and the resolution satisfies... fans of Cleeves lamenting the end of the 'Shetland' series will find much to love in her new characters and setting."―Library Journal (starred)
"Fans missing detective Jimmy Perez (Wild Fire, 2018, etc.) will find a worthy successor in the equally complex Venn, who presides over an excellent mystery in this series kickoff."―Kirkus
"Cleeves makes good use of Devon local color and populates this subtle, expertly paced mystery with distinctive supporting characters."―Publishers Weekly
"As usual with this talented author, the key is relationships, and the murder is an occasion to examine them and then, finally, to expose what rips them apart."―Booklist
"Cleeves' new series is as nuanced, compassionate and compelling as her bestsellers starring two other gifted cops, Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez."―Seattle Times
"Cleeves shows her usual mastery at creating fully fleshed characters, as well as a plot that keeps readers rapt, and ready for the next installment."―Cleveland Plain Dealer
"The Long Call . . . is driven by strong characters who are deep, likeable and presented in great detail. Cleeves is also adept in providing a good sense of place. Although the story is rife with twists and surprises, the end comes together nicely."―The Missourian
"Matthew is immediately engaging. So, especially, is Jonathan, and so are Matthew's two sidekicks, colorful single mother Jen and straitlaced and ambitious Ross."―St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"As a huge fan of both the Shetland and Vera series of books, I had high expectations for Cleeves’ latest. She easily exceeded those expectations with The Long Call. Matthew Venn is a keeper. A stunning debut for Cleeves’ latest crimefighter."―David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"Brilliant, thoughtful and deeply engaging."―Sara Paretsky, New York Times bestselling author of the V.I. Warshawski series
"Ann Cleeves is a phenomenal talent. With unfailing skill, gorgeous setting, flawless plot and seamless voice, she brilliantly conjures new worlds in crime fiction. Her instantly iconic Detective Matthew Venn is a treasure―and we will all follow him anywhere."―Hank Phillippi Ryan, Nationally bestselling and award-winning author of The Murder List
About the Author
ANN CLEEVES is the multi-million copy bestselling author behind three hit television series―Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall, Vera, starring Academy Award Nominee Brenda Blethyn, and The Long Call, starring Ben Aldridge―all of which are watched and loved in the United States. All three are available on BritBox.
The first Shetland novel, Raven Black, won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for best crime novel, and Ann was awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2017. She was awarded the OBE in 2022 for services to reading and libraries. Ann lives in the United Kingdom.
Product details
- Publisher : Minotaur Books; First Edition, 4th printing (September 3, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250204445
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250204448
- Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.29 x 1.19 x 9.38 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #452,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,628 in International Mystery & Crime (Books)
- #3,769 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands...
Ann grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Her father was a village school teacher. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer.
While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. If a person's not heavily into birds - and Ann isn't - there's not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. A couple of these books are seriously dreadful.
In 1987 Tim, Ann and their two daughters moved to Northumberland and the north east provides the inspiration for many of her subsequent titles. The girls have both taken up with Geordie lads. In the autumn of 2006, Ann and Tim finally achieved their ambition of moving back to the North East.
For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and still enjoys working with libraries.
Ann Cleeves on stage at the Duncan Lawrie Dagger awards ceremony
Ann's short film for Border TV, Catching Birds, won a Royal Television Society Award. She has twice been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story The Plater, and the following year for the Dagger in the Library award.
In 2006 Ann Cleeves was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet. The Duncan Lawrie Dagger replaces the CWA's Gold Dagger award, and the winner receives £20,000, making it the world's largest award for crime fiction.
Ann's success was announced at the 2006 Dagger Awards ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton, in London's Aldwych, on Thursday 29 June 2006. She said: "I have never won anything before in my life, so it was a complete shock - but lovely of course.. The evening was relatively relaxing because I'd lost my voice and knew that even if the unexpected happened there was physically no way I could utter a word. So I wouldn't have to give a speech. My editor was deputed to do it!"
The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine).
Ann's books have been translated into sixteen languages. She's a bestseller in Scandinavia and Germany. Her novels sell widely and to critical acclaim in the United States. Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 200.
Bio and photo from Goodreads.
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North Devon. Wooded, riparian, with an estuary where two rivers converge and open onto the Atlantic – the landscape is a main character here, like in the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series. Its description is dense with memories and secrets that tempt villains to go awry in order to protect their own social status.
I skimmed the few closing pages without fully reading them, not getting much more than the fact that in North Devon, not everyone is as lovely as the landscape suggests.
I found the novel flat but rich with potential. Maybe the TV version would be better.
Such was my original review. Later on, I streamed the whole series on BritBox and it was more than I dreamed of in reading the novel. Perhaps it was Ms. Cleeves' intention to put all her power into the TV series, I thought, rather than the book because in several ways film can affect us more than print.
I found the TV series sublime, hallucinatory, visually and aurally beauteous, sensuous at a consistently high level of intensity and excellence.
The alluring yet mysterious background music by Samuel Sim takes its time calming you and keeping you that way while it waits for the next opportunity for drama, to evoke epiphany and the miraculous.
Notes are held long, barely wavering like flowerets in a gentle wind, usually forming chords in string ensemble, in montages and sostenuto.
This makes the TV version intensely atmospheric, through all the drama, plot twists and personal interaction. Not only because of the music, but equally because of the dark ambience (daylight is not very sunny and indoor lighting is mostly natural). Like in Shetland, the color pallet consists of earthy and oceanic colors like tree bark brown and kelp green.
I appreciate the marked sensual intensity, because of escapism. There is respite from the craziness and problems of the world around us which we cannot hope to solve all at once, if they are our problems at all. We can put our feet up and drift away on a cloud of visual and aural beauty and – in the end – observe redemption blossom like flowers for the villains' victims.
Right now, as I take a second look at my Kindle version of the book, I recall the verbal rhythm that Cleeves applies. She will modify or accentuate a noun or noun phrase by placing a comma after it then adding another noun or noun phrase that is close in meaning to the first but not redundant. Instead, it turns our sensibility in an unexpected direction.
The technique calms us, we take deep breaths and relax. Hyperactive urgency is not a Twin Rivers modus vivendi.
One senses silence surrounding those moments. Her phrasing (word choice and prose rhythm) may be subtle regional effects. They treat our ears like music does. Cleeves grew up partly in North Devon.
Rarely, i.e., not overmuch, Cleeves - the extradiegetic narrator - applies grammatical fragmentation. In some cases, she speaks in sentences that might in everyday conversation consist of only a phrase, like "For Liverpool and the Mersey. A city full of life and action" and "Flagstones on the floor and an Aga pockmarked with grease. Another hangover. More coffee and bacon sandwiches on fresh white bread, dripping with fat". Both of these examples appear at a crime scene in chapter 2 of The Heron's Cry.
In another example of fragmentation, she applies repetition to identical grammatical entities (like nouns or noun phrases or two clauses). Separating them only with a comma or a semicolon, rarely a period, she omits conjunction like and or or, as in "Jen thought the man must surely have been aware of the fuss in the yard, the cars, the white-suited CSIs" or – my favorite, from the opening chapter of The Long Call – "upstream, he glimpsed Rock Park and the school where he’d been a student. He’d been a dreamer then, escaping into stories, losing himself on long, lonely walks."
The story itself is interesting with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing. The other characters in the story are fairly well developed and interesting. I loved the care and respect that the woman with downs syndrome were given, I hope to see them in future books. All that being said about Matthew, I will hope for more in the next installment. Ann Cleeves is one of the best mystery writers of our time and I just know she will whip Matthew into shape.
For some reason I was not able to leave a review in Audible. In regards to the Audible version I found the narrators speech to be so rapid and clipped it was very difficult to get used to, but I don't believe it was the narrators fault. I think it was some glitch of audibles because when you listen to him in .75 speed you can hear all the inflections, and proper cadence of the other characters, its just a tad too slow, while the 1x was a tad too fast. I think all the fault was possibly in the speed that Audible or the narrator used in the original recording?