"The Heron's Cry" by Ann Cleeves: #2 in the Two Rivers Series

It's a great moment in any crime novel when the detective realizes, "Oh, I've been looking at this all wrong." There's a sudden burst of energy, maybe a laugh, like when you suddenly notice the little detail that makes a cartoon funny.    

Before that moment blows us away in The Heron's Cry (New York: Minotaur Books, 2021), Ann Cleeves diverts us with characters we mostly like, pursuing suspects we mostly don't.

One significance of the title is how her chief detective Matthew Venn makes his husband think of a heron "just willing to wait. Entirely focused on their prey [and] silent. I'm never quite sure what you're thinking" (236). We do know what he's thinking, how he questions himself silently even while he's questioning a witness or directing his team.

Ditto, the team, detectives named Jen and Ross. Cleeves alternates chapters among these three detectives as they investigate the murder of a wealthy do-gooder. They have complementary strengths -- Jen's intuition and emotional sensitivity, Matthew's cerebral doggedness, and Ross's ready - for - action - and - then - can - we - go - home - please impatience. Already, two books into the series, they are influencing each other.

(BTW - My strongest emotional memories from other books by Cleeves involve the lead detectives' seconds: a young police detective who realizes suddenly that his daughter is in danger, and a diffident country cop who overcomes self-doubt on a mission to London and does just the right thing.)

Our interest in the detectives is one feature that keeps us reading; interest in the cohort around the victim is another. The victim is a benefactor of the arts. We meet a pair of artists dependent on his generosity, and his daughter, whose glass sculptures are weaponized in his murder and another. There's a curious couple who are sort of tenants, sort of live-in servants.

Many of the characters relate to suicides that happened long before this story starts. The murder victim was involved in suicide prevention counseling. The detectives uncover a web-based community that encourages dark ideations.

As this second novel in the Two Rivers series explores issues around suicide, the first one explored questions surrounding adults with intellectual disabilities, their safety and independence. In both novels, the themes emerge naturally from the situations. While there's no authorial preaching, we do develop empathy for people with different perspectives. Such themes give resonance to a genre that can be just an exercise in puzzles and procedures.

I'm looking for more stories to happen in Venn's town of North Devon, between two rivers.