Ann Cleeves

Vera heads Stateside!

Author Ann Cleeves with Vera star Brenda Blethyn at the London launch of Silent Voices

Silent Voices - the forthcoming US edition

Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope made her long-awaited debut in US bookshops on 7th May 2013, when Minotaur Books published Silent Voices on May 7th, delighting the many viewers who have enjoyed the story in Gaby Chiappe's sensitive adaptation of Ann Cleeves's book for the hit TV series VERA.

You wouldn't expect to find DI Vera Stanhope at a health club; but she has her reasons, and they are nothing to do with her work. So when Vera finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals ligature marks around the victim's throat - death is never that simple.

Doing what she does best, Vera pulls her team together and sets them interviewing staff and those connected to the victim, while she and colleague, Sergeant Joe Ashworth, work to find a motive. While Joe struggles to reconcile his home life with the demands made on him by the job, Vera revels being back in charge of an investigation again. Death has never made her feel so alive.

More about Silent Voices.

"I do love Vera!"

Val McDermid

Ann reads a short story for you to listen to: see the Short Stories page.

Ann Cleeves in Shetland; photo © Malcom Younger, Millgaet Media

Two hit crime dramas return!

Hard on the re-commissioning of Shetland, the powerful murder mystery drama based on the novels of award-winning crime writer Ann Cleeves, comes news that there will also be a further series of VERA: during the summer of 2013, while UK viewers are enjoying the third series of the television drama, Brenda Blethyn, David Leon and the rest of the cast and crew will be in Northumberland filming series four.

The first of the four new films, entitled On Harbour Street, will be adapted by writer Paul Rutman from Ann Cleeves' not-yet-published novel of the same title. Paul returns to the VERA writing team with Martha Hillier and Richard Davidson who will adapt films two and three of the new commission.

More about VERA and the Vera Stanhope books.

Shetland returns as a bigger six-part series (three pairs of episodes) with Douglas Henshall returning to the lead role as Detective Jimmy Perez. It will focus on the three more of Ann's Shetland novels: Raven Black, adapted by Gaby Chiappe (The Paradise, Vera), Dead Water by David Kane (Rebus, Field of Blood, This Year's Love) and Blue Lightning adapted by Richard Davidson (Silent Witness, Eastenders).

Ann says: "I'm delighted that viewers will have another chance to explore these beautiful islands and to get to know my characters better."

Read more about Shetland: the TV series, the books, the islands...

Dead Water

For people who discovered the Shetland crime novels by crime writer Ann Cleeves through the recent television drama, Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Ann Cleeves's Detective Jimmy Perez, there is a treat in store: and the best place to start is at the beginning, with Raven Black, the award-winning first book in the Shetland Quartet, set in the depths of a Shetland winter. The TV version was loosely drawn from the third book in the series, Red Bones, but as Ann says, "It's not faithful to the book but it's faithful to the atmosphere and spirit of the book. It's important that it's a good piece of TV rather than stick rigidly to the book."

That initial quartet of novels is complete, and ended with a shocking change in the life of detective Jimmy Perez. Now Ann has launched the first of a new quartet, with Dead Water. This is a time of change for the islands: they have done well from the oil boom, but what will the new era of renewable energy bring? Can Jimmy Perez make a new beginning in his own life? And can he find the murderer of journalist Jerry Markham?

ANN CLEEVES

Vera heads Stateside!

Two hit crime dramas return!

Dead Water