****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Ann Cleeves shines in Silent Voices, a novel of small-town secrets and wishful thinking that lead to murder. Vera Stanhope is, hands-down, one of the best fictional detectives ever to grace the written page. She is brilliant, of course, but her brilliance sometimes gets in her way. Other times her very human flaws trip her up as well.In fact, I think Vera's flaws are my favorite part about her. She is not a super sexy woman, like the private detective in the Miss Fischer mysteries, for example. Vera is, instead, overweight, unhealthy, and outwardly grouchy. At the same time, though, she cares very deeply for the people who work for her -- especially Joe Ashworth.Throughout Silent Voices, Cleeves paints extremely vivid images of these broken characters that leave you feeling as if you have taken the ride side-by-side with them. Instead of being completely out of reach of the reader, these characters could be any one of us, they are so fully developed and so human.The mystery itself is mind-boggling throughout. Part of the fun of reading mysteries is to see if you can pin down the killer before the detective does. However, I find it far more satisfying when the author crafts a mystery that, in spite of all the clues, leaves me surprised and shocked at who the killer really is. Cleeves does that in Silent Voices, in a bleak and lonely setting, brilliantly.If you haven't read a Vera Stanhope novel before, take my word for it, you should rectify that immediately.
