Silent Voices: A Vera Stanhope Mystery
*Starred Review* Vera Stanhope, the overweight, unfashionable, irascible, and brilliant detective inspector with the Northumbria police, has been going great guns in the UK for years—five novels have appeared, and an ITV dramatization, Vera, is in its third season. This mystery, the fourth in the series, introduces U.S. readers to a woman who feels a bit guilty that a good murder case always lifts her spirits. A stab at getting fit puts Vera right in a crime scene this time, at the very fitness center where Vera has been hopelessly doing laps on the advice of her doctor. Vera sits in the steam room after her laps, feeling very bulky and out of place, envying the woman with the long lean legs who seems so relaxed next to her—a little too relaxed. Vera discovers that the woman is dead. The unraveling of the mystery that ensues delivers a deft blending of contemporary forensic analysis and old-fashioned interviewing that branches out from the fitness center (this is a locked-room mystery, at least to begin with) to the murdered woman’s family and acquaintances. It’s Vera herself that makes the novel. The way Cleeves presents the point of view of a woman who is both vain and can’t-be-bothered yet always aware of her own shambling appearance and of what may lie beneath other people’s polished appearances is priceless. A nice mixture, in the British tradition, of social comedy and detective work. More Vera, please. --Connie Fletcher