THE MATTHEW VENN MYSTERIES: THE LONG CALL starts Ann Cleeves' new "Two Rivers" mystery series

THE LONG CALL
ANN CLEEVES (Two Rivers #1)
Minotaur Books
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

WINNER OF THE 2019 AGATHA AWARD FOR BEST CONTEMPORARY NOVEL!

SOON TO BE AN EVENT SERIES ON ITV/BRITBOX!

The Publisher Says: In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father's funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.

Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed, and his new life is forced into a collision course with the world he thought he'd left behind.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM MY LIBRARY. BE SURE TO USE YOUR LIBRARIES, FOLKS! THEY NEED US.

My Review: Don't you hate being Right? It's the police's job, though, isn't it; they have to be Right or the consequences are so dire for so many people...innocent people who don't know their trust has been abused.

And that's why we read mysteries! They're ma'at in action, aren't they? Small demonstrations that when our Negative Confessions come before Osiris, Hapi won't need to open those toothy crocodilian jaws and end our existence. And I'm using ancient Egyptian examples for a very specific reason.

Matthew Venn is a new series character for mystery veteran Cleeves, she of Vera and Jimmy Perez (Shetland) fame. She's chosen England's most beautiful county (and her own native ground), North Devon, for her setting. She's decided the twenty-first century's not going to take her down without a fight, so Matthew's gay, and a lapsed member of one of the seemingly innumerable weirdo strict-constructionist christian sects. His involvement in matters churchly having perforce lapsed when he came out, he doesn't have contact with his former friends despite being back among them in his posting as a Detective Inspector. He does have a lot of community ties, though, as he's married to the man responsible for the local arts-and-social-services venue.

And now that sense of place is established....

Murder and maleficent doings are afoot.

People who are possessed of money mistake its power for their own. They imagine that, because they can push money into open palms, they're the ones with Power. But the only ones without money, but who want it, are the only ones whose hands are open enough to close their minds, their eyes, their hearts. Those who don't care, whose worlds don't revolve around the money-god, are a sight more open to concerns that aren't important to the obsessed.

He was a man who’d turned his personal likes and dislikes into a moral code; because he didn’t enjoy spending money in the Woodyard cafe, there was something morally suspect about the people who did. The Brethren had been much the same. Matthew thought they’d created a God in their own image, hard, cold and inflexible.

It's this dichotomy that Author Cleeves mines for the plot of this tale. It is about power, and its abuse, and the only person who won't stay quiet about it is the one whose hands aren't outstretched for more, but in finger-pointing accusation. The moneyed, the influential, can't have that and they rally around the problem of their own positions, their absolutely justified and necessary access to More.

Looking at the assembled group, the families and the ardent young converts, Matthew had had a sudden understanding, as the early evening sunshine shone through the dusty glass, a vision close to a religious experience: this was all a sham. The earnest elderly women in their mushroom-shaped hats, the bluff good-natured men – they were all deluding themselves. They were here for their own reasons, for the power trip or because they’d grown up with the group and couldn’t let go.

It's such a shame that some Others must die to maintain it.

As always, Author Cleeves will lead you a merry chase and make your head spin with information you think could be important but...and then there's...what about...it's her stock in trade. All those Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez novels aren't accidental! But here's my beef with this book...like all Author Cleeves' work, there is a startling amount of sexlessness here. Matthew and Jonathan aren't even allowed a cuddle (British sense) on the page...there's no suggestion of sex in any of her books. Of the healthy sort.

All night, he’d been aware of Jonathan sleeping beside him, motionless, the gentle breaths not moving his body. Jonathan had a gift for sleep that Matthew envied more than anything. More than his husband’s easy confidence, his courage, his ability to laugh off hurt and insults. Now Matthew was alone in bed and that rarely happened. Usually he was the first up.

And that continues here. I quite strongly wish she'd move past this, what? reticence? distaste? whatever it is because this is new territory for her. These are the first gay people in her books! Use this freshness as a chance to stop pathologizing sex. Matthew needs Jonathan's comforting bodily presence as any husband who's just been through a physical and emotional ordeal would. But he isn't granted it. And it's true none of her other sleuths are, either, which is why I'm bringing it up now.

When Matthew's police work results in a resolution for this case that I must say I dismissed as improbable when it occurred to me, I was surprised. Author Cleeves brought in motives I didn't expect. She made me think, hard, about how she'd placed her tells and her Maguffins. If that isn't a sheer, unadulterated pleasure for an old, experienced bird-dogger, I don't know what is.

Book two of the series comes out tomorrow! You *will* want to get one. It's a new-series Cleeves mystery...how could you possibly resist?