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A review by shreyas1599
The Long Call by Ann Cleeves
5.0
Small-town mystery with lots of focus on character development
I had only ever heard of Ann Cleeves from the TV series Shetland (although I’ve never read it). I particularly loved that show for its picturesque setting, complex characters and slow-paced procedural culminating in a semi-dramatic finish.
All of those boxes were ticked by this book. It started out slowly diving into the character of everyone, digging into their backgrounds, hinting at suspects, ruling out suspects, until finally revealing what’s what.
The big reveal was not too complex, and the trope of a cover-up only worked well because there was enough focus on the personalities of the characters throughout the book.
The guilty felt their actions justified and the guilty parties were hinted at, at several junctures. Everyone had their one selfish reasons for doing what they did and the reader was made to see the justifications from the characters’ perspective.
True to its setting, there were no high speed car chases, gruesome murders with mutilations put on display in the middle of the street or anything of the sort. But of course, a murder is a murder.
The facts were gradually unravelled through the story, sub plots were built in to provide satisfaction to keep plodding through until the dots were connected in the end. Any astute crime reader could’ve roughly mapped out the endgame but I kept trudging along for the semi-dramatic finish. There cannot ever be a crime fiction novel written without at least a semi-dramatic finish and this book did provide one!
Enjoyed this read!
I’m definitely going to try out other books by the author.
I had only ever heard of Ann Cleeves from the TV series Shetland (although I’ve never read it). I particularly loved that show for its picturesque setting, complex characters and slow-paced procedural culminating in a semi-dramatic finish.
All of those boxes were ticked by this book. It started out slowly diving into the character of everyone, digging into their backgrounds, hinting at suspects, ruling out suspects, until finally revealing what’s what.
The big reveal was not too complex, and the trope of a cover-up only worked well because there was enough focus on the personalities of the characters throughout the book.
The guilty felt their actions justified and the guilty parties were hinted at, at several junctures. Everyone had their one selfish reasons for doing what they did and the reader was made to see the justifications from the characters’ perspective.
True to its setting, there were no high speed car chases, gruesome murders with mutilations put on display in the middle of the street or anything of the sort. But of course, a murder is a murder.
The facts were gradually unravelled through the story, sub plots were built in to provide satisfaction to keep plodding through until the dots were connected in the end. Any astute crime reader could’ve roughly mapped out the endgame but I kept trudging along for the semi-dramatic finish. There cannot ever be a crime fiction novel written without at least a semi-dramatic finish and this book did provide one!
Enjoyed this read!
I’m definitely going to try out other books by the author.