Ann Cleeves--The Raging Tide

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always the biggest treat to welcome Ann Cleeves--author of the Shetland novels, the VERA novels, and now the Two Rivers series featuring detective Matthew Venn, all three of which have been adapted as hugely popular television shows--to Jungle Red!! 

Ann's new Matthew Venn novel, THE RAGING STORM, is out in the US on September 5th, AND Ann will be the International Guest of Honor at Bouchercon in San Diego! 

Ann, welcome back to Jungle Red!

DEBS: Matthew Venn, your detective in the Two Rivers novels, seems quite a departure from your Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez. For one thing, he's gay, and for another, he's in a committed, loving relationship with his husband, Jonathan. Was there a particular inspiration for the character?

ANN: There was!  When my husband Tim died, the people who looked after me, who scooped me up from the hospital, and who helped me organize the funeral along with my daughters, were Martin and Paul, a gay couple who have since married.  They’d been Tim’s close friends and they were grieving too, but they’re still looking out for me.  I wanted to celebrate their relationship.

DEBS: Matthew's background is unusual, too, as he grew up in a strict fundamentalist religious cult, and that upbringing affects the way he processes the world and approaches his cases. It's unusual and so interesting. Were the Barun Brethren modeled on a real group?

ANN: Not exactly.  Barum was the Latin name for Barnstaple, so I created a fictitious group.  I didn’t want to offend real believers. There are small exclusive groups who have similar beliefs, though.  The same certainties.  It seemed to me that if someone lost their faith, suddenly and dramatically as Matthew Venn did, they might feel very chaotic and unanchored and turn to the police service to find the sense of belonging, honour and duty they were missing.

DEBS: You've hopscotched around the UK with the settings for your book--Shetland, Northumberland, and now Devon. What drew you to the West Country?

ANN:  It’s where I grew up!  My father was a village schoolteacher in the Taw Valley and then on the North Devon coast in Woolacombe. I live in Northumberland now and lived in Shetland when I was a young woman.

DEBS: In THE RAGING STORM, a body is found near the village of Greystone on the north Devon coast. It's a very forbidding place; gray, isolated, cold, claustrophobic--it's such a wonderful atmospheric setting for a mystery that it almost becomes a character in itself. Is Greystone based on a real place?

ANN: The inspiration came when I was watching the first Matthew Venn novel, The Long Call, being filmed.  The production company had chosen Hartland Quay as one of the locations.  It has gloomy grey cliffs, and the weather was horrendous.  I was looking for a different, less tourist-led place to set the book, and that was the jumping off point.

DEBS: This book has such a twisty-turny complicated plot. I wondered how much you plan ahead?

ANN: Not at all!  I don’t know anything about the book, except the setting, when I start.  Very quickly I decided that this would be more of an adventure story than anything else I’d written.  The victim, Jem Rosco, is rather piratical, there are rescues at sea, and superstition.  But I still didn’t know the plot details!

DEBS: Once your series has been adapted for TV, do you find yourself adjusting what you write to sync with the way things are portrayed in the show? Do you now see Ben Aldridge (who is terrific) when you're writing Matthew?

ANN:  No, I don’t.  Ben is very much more good-looking than Matthew, who is rather restrained!

DEBS: Now that the Shetland books are finished (sniff), is there anything else on your horizon? New settings? New characters?

ANN:  The next novel will be a Vera book – I’m working on that now – and I definitely want to write more Matthew Venn books.  But who knows?  As I said, I don’t plan anything…

DEBS: One last question--what do you read for fun?

ANN: Mostly crime fiction!  There’s such a range within the genre – I’m reading Irvine Welsh’s Long Knives at the moment, which is violent, and thought-provoking and gripping, but I love more traditional Golden Age novels too.

DEBS: And one more question! Tell us what you’ll be up to at Bouchercon!!

ANN: Catching up with friends!  That’s what crime conventions are all about!

DEBS: Ann's Guest of Honor interview will be on Thursday, the 31st, at 4:30, and she'll be interviewed by Catriona McPherson and Lori Rader-Day. I'm sure it will be a highlight of the conference!

Here's more about THE RAGING STORM--

When Jem Rosco—sailor, adventurer, and legend—blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. But just as abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again, and soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.

This is an uncomfortable case for Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Greystone is a place he visited as a child, a community he parted ways with. Superstition and rumor mix with fact as another body is found, and Venn finds his judgment clouded.

As the winds howl, and Venn and his team investigate, he realizes that no one, including himself, is safe from Scully Cove’s storm of dark secrets.

DEBS: Ann will be stopping by to visit, so do add any questions I've missed in the comments!

 

 

Do you Binge?

RHYS BOWEN: A couple of weeks ago we decided to watch the third season of The Crown. Actually we binge-watched it. Several episodes a night until I was falling asleep. In a way it was satisfying to see it one episode after another as one could follow the continuity of the story. But then I regretted it was over so quickly. I remember how much I enjoyed Downton Abbey when it first came out, waiting impatiently for the next Sunday night to find out what happened next and when Mary would finally get together with Matthew. And then the awful wait for another whole year and the next season of the story.

                Actually I loved the anticipation. It gave us something to talk about, to discuss with friends. Who would Mary pick? Did I think this suitor was a good choice? What would happen to Edith?  I’m not quite so invested in Queen Victoria as I know what happened to her in real life, but I’m still looking forward to the continuation of her story, unfolding week by week. (Anyone know when this might happen?)
                In England most series come out with a six week run, even the sit-coms, and then you have to wait until the next year to continue. This is annoying but…
                I love anticipation, don’t you? Do you remember counting off the days until your birthday or the end of school as a child? Even now I find myself saying “Three weeks until Christmas” or lying in bed planning our next vacation.
                So I’m interested to know what the rest of you think? Do you binge-watch? Binge-read? I get letters from fans who say “I’ve just discovered your series and I have read non-stop until I’m up to date.”  I suppose when you look at it, reading a series is just like one long extended novel so it might make sense to read it through without stopping. But as a reader I would love the tension of not knowing whether Georgie and Darcy would finally get together.
                So confession time: any binge-watchers/binge-readers out there?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I am so used to binge-watching now that I’m baffled when I have to wait for the next episode. We completely binged The Crown, and  Unbelievable, and The Jury, and all kinds of other things that I forget. So we started watching The Outsider, and it’s fabulous, but--oh! I have to wait? So I can see both methods of watching--I do love to be able to see it all, but then, as you say,  it’s so over.


And psychologically? I am not so hot on anticipation, I have to say. Just show me. Just tell me. Just do it. Let’s just--go. But that’s me.


Binge reading? Huh. I’d think I’ve ever done that. I think it would be--diminishing returns.


LUCY BURDETTE: this is a great question Rhys! We are just home from a fabulous trip to Africa--all was great fun except for the actual getting there and getting home part. Luckily on the way home (one of the flights was 16 hours!), the airline offered Season 2 of BIG LITTLE LIES. I had already watched this and loved it so much that I was happy to watch again. I made it through all 7 episodes and this helped the time go by so well! I was finishing the denouement as our wheels touched down. (By the way, Reese Witherspoon is an absolute genius. How can one woman be such a brilliant actor and writer and incredible supporter of books, authors, and reading??)


Usually with TV shows though, we like to spread things out. And this is true for book series for me too. I’ve been slowly making my way through VERA by Ann Cleeves, and I should finish the last installment, THE MOTH CATCHER, by the time her newest book comes out next fall.


JENN McKINLAY: Binge reader/watcher here. I am a binger. When I find an author I enjoy, I double back and read everything they’ve written, especially if it’s a series. I like to do a complete immersion into the author’s world. I read the first five Harry Potter books (I came late to the party) in three weeks. Usually, I generally only read for pleasure at night, so it takes me a while to finish a big series. I am the same with TV. I will gobble up a show (curse you, Netflix, for looping one episode after another) until I run out and am left bereft. Shows that have hooked me in lately are Dead To Me (so good) and Fleabag (fabulous).
     Weirdly, I do love a cliff hanger and if a show or a book ends on a wicked twist and I have to wait, I am thrilled with the anticipation.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I actually like a bit of both. It’s certainly nice to be able to stream a whole series, but when we were watching The Mandalorian, looking forward to Friday nights and a new episode was really fun.  Now we are doing that with the new Star Trek Picard (which I’m not sure I’m following at all…) When Rick and I are watching something together it’s usually just on weekends, so it can take us several weeks to get through a series. If it’s just me, however, I tend to get distracted. Too many choices!! I’m still trying to finish the third season of Broadchurch, and have watched Vera totally sporadically. (Lucy, did you know there is a new series out?)


Series books I do binge read, and I think that is one of the biggest treats of reading. But then you eventually get to the end and have to wait for a new book to come out!


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Can I, like Debs, say both? The girls and I watched the entire run of The Mandalorian in one loooong evening, and I don’t think I could have survived seeing what happened next if I had to wait for a week. On the other hand, I love the painfully delicious sensation of waiting for the next book in a beloved series to come out, and like Jenn, I LOVE cliffhangers (this will not be a surprise to anyone who reads my own novels.)


Because we have a history of buying CD collections of or streaming older TV shows, I’ve noticed that the structure and pacing of the stories seem to have changed to fit the binging era. If I watch all however-many episodes of Russian Doll in one night, it doesn’t feel as if the story has been rushed. But, as an example, when I shared my beloved Babylon 5 with the kids, seeing one episode after another made it feel like all the events and character changes were on fast forward. I think B5 is a good example because it was the first TV show that I know of to have a genuinely novelistic approach to a season - unlike everything that came before, which was pretty much strictly episodic. But it was written for viewers who would have a week between chapters, as it were, and so the actual time passing helped fix the time unfolding in the show. We had to go back to watching it with a few days between episodes to make it feel right.

RHYS: So who out there likes to binge? Who likes the anticipation of waiting and spreading the satisfaction?

ANN CLEEVES Visits the Reds!

LUCY BURDETTE: Reds, I cannot tell you how excited I am to introduce today's guest. Ann Cleeves is the author of 8 Jimmy Perez Shetland books, plus eight Vera Stanhope novels, among others. She has a new series debuting next month with A LONG CALL. She won the CWA dagger award for Raven Black, and has had two series developed for television. Ann, we are rabid fans of your work and so very happy to have you here!

LUCY: I am a huge fan of the Shetland series and just finished Raven Black, which I read after all the others. Jimmy Perez’s life changed so much over the course of his series. How much of that arc had you imagined when you were writing Raven Black?

ANN: I didn’t have any of the story arc planned when I was writing Raven Black.  I thought it would be a single, stand-alone novel.  The theme of the book is about belonging and the outsider, kindness and inclusion.  That’s why Jimmy Perez is such a contradiction; he belongs, but not quite.  He’s a Shetlander, but he comes from Fair Isle, the most remote inhabited island in the group and a place most Shetlanders have never visited.  His family has lived in the islands for generations, but he has a Spanish name and a Mediterranean appearance.  When she first read the book, my editor was clear that it would be a stand-alone novel – it would stretch credibility to have more than one murder in a place with a population of just 23,000 – then it sold more copies than anything else I’d written and we agreed it would run to a short series.  Wild Fire, recently published in the US in paperback, is the eighth and last.

LUCY: I’m sad about the series ending with Wild Fire though I won’t argue with your decision! I would love to hear what went into the decision to let Jimmy and Willow go off without a bunch of readers watching their every move?

ANN: I knew that Wild Fire would be the last book, though I’m hoping that there might be more TV series.  I never plot in advance, so when I started writing, there was even a possibility that I would kill Jimmy Perez!  I understood a little about Willow’s situation, because that was fore-shadowed in the previous book, Cold Earth.  I wanted an ending that would be a little ambiguous, and would mark a new beginning in the lives of both central characters.

LUCY: Now Vera...she seems to experience less internal growth than Jimmy--maybe this is because she doesn't experience the dramatic life events that Jimmy Perez did. Was this an intentional choice? 

ANN: I think Vera’s character was formed early in the events of childhood, and though we learn more about that during the books, back story is harder to do in the TV drama.  I think the scriptwriter did a great job of explaining her past in the adaptation of The Seagull.  Vera grew up without a mother, raised by a father grieving for the woman he adored and resenting the burden of a child, especially a daughter.  By the time we meet her, you’re right, she knows who she is and what she needs: her work, her team and her house in the hills.  Definitely not a man!  When we meet Jimmy Perez, he’s on the brink of a new life back in Shetland, and we travel with him through the good times and the bad.

 LUCY: You use multiple points of view and seem to know many characters very well. How do you choose which character tells which part of the story?

ANN: I love writing from multiple view points.  The joy of writing is to see the world through another person’s eyes – and that’s the joy of reading too of course.  Again, the choice of POV is instinctive.  The returning characters always get a voice, and then I choose one or two others to help tell the story.  They grow in the writing and aren’t very much planned in advance.

LUCY: Some of the Reds have managed to snag an advance copy of the new book but I and many others are waiting until September. Can you give us a little preview of what’s coming?

ANN: In The Long Call, I return to my home county of North Devon.  I had a wonderfully happy childhood there and still have friends living in the largest town, Barnstaple. It’s an interesting region, beautiful, but quite isolated.  It pulls in holiday makers, but also transient seasonal workers, drifters, and there’s a lot of rural poverty.  My new series character Matthew Venn grew up in a fictional enclosed, rather blinkered religious community called the Barum Brethren.  When he lost his faith, his world crumbled and he found order again by becoming a police officer.  The book starts with him standing outside the chapel where his father’s funeral service is taking place, feeling unable to join in.  Then of course, he gets the call that a body has been found…

Photo: © Ph Matsas / Opale

LUCY: Who has inspired your work, and along that same line, what do you like to read?

ANN: My reading passion is crime fiction in translation.  I love the sense of vicarious travel.  I believe we have a sense of a culture’s preoccupations when we read its popular fiction and that at a time when we seem pulled to extremes, we need that insight and understanding.

Ann, thanks so very much for taking the time to answer our questions. Reds, Ann will be stopping by to answer questions and comments, if Blogger cooperates! And you can read more about Ann and her books on her website and twitter and facebook, and buy her books wherever books are sold.

Familiar faces in unfamiliar places from the Brits

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm terrible at recognizing people, out of context.

I was once at a reception sponsored by People Magazine at BookExpo, chatting with a man who looked so familiar. “Haven’t I met you somewhere before,” I asked him.

“You might have seen me on television,” he said.

Blank.

“On The Office?" he says.

Doink. It was B.J. Novak, a very distinctive looking actor who played Ryan Howard, one of the misfits at Dunder Mifflin. And I am mortified. But really, who expects to end up chatting with a TV star at a book event, even if it is sponsored by People.

I have that same experience watching British TV shows. I see an actor and I think, You look familiar. Don’t I know you? And in a way, I do.

It's disconcerting when James Norton, who plays the human/saintly detective/vicar Sidney Cambers in Grantchester turns up as psychopathic, ex-con, drug dealer Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley. 

I got very attached to Honeysuckle Weeks as Foyle’s driver and assistant on Foyle’s War. Now she turns up on Midsomer Murders, Inspector Lewis, and Death in Paradise playing characters who bear no resemblance to plucky Sam.

Amanda Abbington, who plays Watson’s wife, Mary Morstan, in Sherlock (I'm still getting over her death) turns up in Case Histories as Jackson Brody’s former boss, DCI Louise Munroe. Now she's one of the leads in a new series on Netflix, Safe. (Did you know she's married... now getting divorced from Martin Freeman (who by the way played Bilbo Baggins in the movie of The Hobbit) who played Watson?)

Sometimes it seems as if the BBC has about fourteen actors that get recycled in their programs. It’s like subscribing to an ensemble company. And by the way, whenever you see one of those actors whom you recognize turn up on a whodunit like Midsummer Murders or Father Brown or Death in Paradise, you can be pretty sure shedunnit.

Last Tango in Halifax is a good example of a cast who pop up in multiple other programs. I'm a particular fan of Nicola Walker who's now one of the leads on Unforgotten.

Do you find yourself watching British TV shows, pointing to one of the actors and asking, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

What We're Watching

INGRID THOFT
Just as I'm always looking for great book recommendations, I'm equally eager to get movie and TV recommendations.  I'll go first, with the hope that like a chain letter, I'll get many suggestions in return!

Acorn TV has provided the three most recent shows I've been watching.  They're also available on DVD if you don't have Acorn.  The first, SUSPECTS, is a show about a team of detectives in Manchester, England.  The amazing thing about this show is that the dialogue is largely improvised.  This, and the style of the camera work, gives it a documentary-like style.  It's fast paced—I need the subtitles even though it's in English—and the investigative work they do is very compelling.  I'm not sure how they would solve crimes in the U.K. without the help of CCTV!  I hope this show is picked up for another season.

THE DISAPPEARANCE is a french miniseries about the disappearance of a teenage girl in Marseilles, France.  I binged this one and even sent the DVD to my mom since I thought she'd enjoy it, too.  There are many cliffhangers, and the acting is great.  There are a couple of plot twists that are rather implausible (and don't even get me started on the cleavage baring wardrobe of the female cop), but I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys mysteries, particularly those set outside of the U.S.

My third pick is very different in tone:  It's lighter and doesn't focus on serious crime.  STRIKING OUT is set in Dublin and follows a young lawyer who has "struck out" on her own after leaving a large corporate firm.  The main characters are charming, and it's interesting to get a bit of insight into the Irish legal system.  I leave the subtitles on for this show, too.  The accents are lovely, but interfere as I try to follow the plot!

How about you, Reds?  What are you watching these days?

JENN McKINLAY: The last TV show I was really hooked on was THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW. Loved, loved, loved it, but they changed the format and the cast so that's over. Sadly, I don't watch much TV. If I find something I like, I will binge watch it, but most of my evenings are spent reading, playing ping pong with the Hooligans, or floating in the pool with the Hub while listening to the Grateful Dead. I am really looking forward to the recommendations here - clearly I need to up my TV game.

HALLIE EPHRON: The two shows I love are VERA (with Brenda Blethyn based on the series by Ann Cleeves) and THE DETECTORISTS.

Up to now, all seven seasons of VERA have been on Acorn, but suddenly, the new season is going to Britbox. BOOO. I really don't want another subscription.

THE DETECTORISTS is not a crime show—it's a quirky British ensemble comedy about a bunch of sweet sad sacks who love to go out with their metal detectors in search of buried treasure. Can't wait for the new season. Also loved, but waiting for new seasons of: GLOW and THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL.

I'm trying to get hooked on CASE STUDIES and BOSCH, but so far not succeeding. And though I loved the first episodes of SHERLOCK, the final ones that are streaming are too bizarre. And wondering about THE AMERICANS. Advice??

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh, I'm no further along on TV than I was the last time we discussed it. We have one more episode of THE CROWN to watch, then will be waiting for the third season. I will have to try VERA, since I'm so hooked on Ann Cleeves's Shetland mysteries. Actually Jenn, I think you are doing exactly the right thing playing pool with the hooligans and floating in the pool with hub. Great priorities!

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  Ingrid, I'm checking out all three of the shows you mentioned. Although how I'll ever manage to watch all of them, I don't know. I'm behind on VERA and just about everything else.

What we have been watching and loving is a sci-fi series on Netflix called TRAVELERS. People from the future send their consciousnesses back to the 21st century to try to affect the future timeline. There are, of course, the usual time travel paradoxes, but it's so well done, and we love all the characters so much that we are totally hooked. Two more episodes to watch in season two, but I just read that season three is in production. Although it's supposed to be set in Seattle, it's actually filmed in Canada, and all the actors are Canadian.
I'm also loving a series running on my local PBS station, but I think it is also on Acorn, called PIE IN THE SKY. It ran for about five years in the mid-nineties in the UK. Richard Griffith's stars as an irascible police officer who is trying to retire and open a restaurant. Absolutely charming, and I adore it.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So here's what happened. We love THE AMERICANS and really look forward to it. If you haven't watched it, the pilot episode is one of the bet ever, and the show kept going beautifully—now it the midst of the last season. All good. About Russian spies embedded as Americans, and it's great.
We also love HOMELAND. More spies. All good.  But now, one  of the actors who plays a spy on THE AMERICANS is now in the cast of HOMELAND, as a spy!  I am hopelessly confused.

Same thing happened with two other shows. We started watching MADAME SECRETARY long ago—you DO watch that, right? SO good, about a female Secretary of State.  Then we started watching DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, about the one cabinet member left alive after bad guys blow up the US Capitol.  So then the next week on MADAME SECRETARY, they walked into the Capitol building, of course, and I said to Jonathan—hey! How did they  rebuild that so fast? Then I realized—it was another show.

Maybe I am simply not cut out for this, and should stick with PROJECT RUNWAY!

I am also ashamed to say we finally started watching BREAKING BAD.  We had started once, and decided it was a no. Then, for some reason, we tried it again.  Readers, it is fabulous. Fabulous! Surprising in every way. Highly highly recommended, but then you probably are all watching it already.

Brenda Blethyn a.k.a Vera Stanhope

RHYS BOWEN:  Another VERA fan here and having just met Brenda Blethyn, I'm even more of a fan because she was so lovely and friendly and just hung out with us at Malice. I was hooked on THE CROWN and VICTORIA, and I gather there will be a season three of both.  I love THE AMAZING RACE because they go to such different parts of the world. Otherwise a lot of PBS documentaries.


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The Smithie and I have gotten into a wonderful crime fiction/thriller/horror series on Amazon Prime - FORTITUDE. It's a combination of Arnaldur Indriðason, Michael Crichton, and your favorite arctic nature documentary - a genuinely twisty, puzzling mystery set in a fictionalized version of Svalbard, where climate change is threatening the livelihood of scientists, fishermen and the tourism economy. 

It has an amazing cast, comprising Scandanavian and Irish actors I've never seen before with star power like Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon and Dennis Quaid. The breakout is Richard Dormer as the lonely, conflicted sheriff at the center of the story. I can almost always spot the clues and figure our whodunnit well before the end of movie or TV mysteries, but I was well and truly stumped throughout the first series. Two seasons are up already, and the Irish/UK producer, SKY Atlantic, has signed for a third and final series. If you have Prime, check it out, and let me know what you think.

What TV gems can you share with us today, Readers?