Ann cleves author biography essay
What are you reading right now?
I’m very lucky to get sent lots of proof copies and right now I'm reading the new Richard Osmond, The Last Devil To Die. I’m enjoying it – it’s very entertaining. I love that his books are about older people, and this one explores the pain within a relationship when one member of a couple gets Alzheimer's. Although it is quite light-hearted, it does explore that dynamic really beautifully. His transition into novels has been really quite extraordinary and really inspiring.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I always loved reading – from when I was young. It was a lot easier to be passionate about reading then because there were no other distractions and very little television. I didn't come from the sort of family where it seemed possible to be a writer, which is probably why my first book came out when I was in my early 30s. At the time, my husband and I were living on a very small tidal island off the coast of north Wales, which was fairly boring if you weren’t into birds, which I wasn’t really. So that's when I started writing. But it was a lot easier to get published in the 1980s, too. My first book was called A Bird in the Hand and it came out in 1986. I carried on writing, publishing roughly a book a year, but had no real commercial success until 2006 when Raven Black came out and I won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger. The thing to realise is I always had to have other work. There's this myth that once you’re a published author, you're going to make a fortune. Not many people know I also trained to be a social worker and worked for a bit as a probation officer, before working in public libraries as a reader development officer.
Can you tell us a bit about your writing routine now?
I travel a lot these days to various festivals and things but, when I've got a clear day, I always wake up very early – around 5:30am – and make myself tea. Then, I sit at my kitchen table until I've writt Since Ann Cleeves is one of my favourite crime authors, I was thrilled to receive an advanced copy of her latest Vera Stanhope investigation, The Dark Wives to review. With links to folklore, I had high hopes for this novel. Scroll down to see if it hit my high expectations. Thank you Random Things Tours for the blog invite so I could give my unbiased and honest review. Title: The Dark Wives Author: Ann Cleeves Publisher: Pan Macmillan Genre: Crime fiction Release date: 29th August 2024 A LOCAL MYTH. A DEADLY THREAT. Vera Stanhope returns in the eleventh formidable novel in Ann Cleeves’ acclaimed series The man’s body is found in the early morning light by a local dog walker on the common outside Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who was due to work the previous night but never showed up. DCI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate the death. Her only clue is the disappearance of one of the home’s residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence. Vera can’t bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can’t dismiss the possibility. Vera, Joe and new team member Rosie Bell are soon embroiled in the case, and when a second connected body is found near the Three Dark Wives standing stones in the wilds of the Northumbrian countryside, superstition and folklore begin to collide with fact. Vera knows she has to find Chloe to get to the truth, but it seems that the dark secrets in their community may be far more dangerous than she could ever have believed possible. “Cleeves’s Northumberland novels are strong on atmosphere, combining old-fashioned detective work with a modern take on class” THE SUNDAY TIMES ‘One of the best natural writers of detective fiction’ SUNDAY EXPRESS ‘The best living evoker of landscape’ THE GUARDIAN Like all of the It has to be said at the start that Ann's certainly led an interesting life so far, fitting in so many jobs-with-a-difference and in so many different places: from Devon to Northumberland, Fair Isle in the Shetlands and, of course, Huddersfield. 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, and are all now available from Bello, Pan Macmillan’s digital imprint. 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’s short film for Border TV, Catching B
Book Review: The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves
Blurb
My Thoughts
But she's gained most acclaim from her writing, with books like the Detective Inspector Ramsey series, The Crow Trap, The Sleeping And The Dead and now Telling Tales hitting the spot for fans of crimewriting here in West Yorkshire and beyond. She's also a member of the Murder Squad, a group of crime writers based in the North, and she regularly holds joint events with Crime Scene Investigations (CSI) officer Helen Pepper. She's busy and she's back!
Your latest novel, Telling Tales, is set in East Yorkshire. Have you been tempted to set a book in West Yorkshire - your current home - yet?
Well, the closest is Telling Tales. Possibly I will set one here in West Yorkshire eventually. It's much easier to write books when you're not there - especially if it's a place you like and miss. There's no impetus yet to set one in West Yorkshire. We go to the East Riding quite a lot. My Husband is a keen birdwatcher and Spurn Point, where the book is set, is obviously very good for rare birds so I've spent quite a lot of time there. I like the coast: growing up in Devon, right on the sea and then in Northumberland where we also lived on the coast. So Spurn's really the nearest to West Yorkshire as far as the coast is concerned. Spurn Point's a very distinctive place. I like the sense of impermanence, and the land crumbling into the sea, you're not quite sure where the sea starts and where the land ends. There are great flat wide open spaces, it's quite an impressive backdrop. I'd been reading lots of gothic novels when I wrote that, you always have magnificent weather when you go there. So maybe it's a bit overblown!
One of your previous jobs was as a probation officer, but that's not actually quite where the idea of writing
The Crime Writers’ Association
Shortlisted
Ann Cleeves
Published by: Macmillan