It is turning into a complex case and Venn needs to keep his wits about him as the investigation takes strange turn after strange turn. Maybe that’s why he wanted to talk to Jen. It soon transpires that Yeo had expanded the remit of the watchdog and had been looking at the recent suicide of a young mentally ill local man. Yeo was a former hospital doctor who had moved out of the National Health Service to head up North Devon Patients Together, a watchdog monitoring the local NHS Trusts – a kind of poacher turned gamekeeper. Ley has ruffled feathers through his philanthropy, which some see as promoting the gentrification of North Devon, but he seems genuinely shocked by the death of a man he knew pretty well. The commune is in the grounds of a big old house owned by millionaire and philanthropist Francis Ley and as Jen talks to the victim’s daughter, Venn moves over to the big house, to talk to him. His body is found at an off-the-beaten-track artists’ commune, where his glassblower daughter Eve lives – and the murder weapon is from one of her broken vases. A long shard of broken glass is sticking out of his neck. But it soon becomes clear he wants her professional advice and after getting Jen’s details he leaves. She’s at a friend’s party, drinking too much and generally enjoying herself when she’s introduced to Nigel Yeo, who asks for her number and for a moment Jen thinks he’s hitting on her. Was I looking forward to meeting Venn again? You betcha! But as The Heron’s Cry opens, it is his second in command, DS Jen Rafferty, who is in the spotlight. Happily it was the former, and the book even made it into my top 5 choices of 2019. After all, Cleeves is the creator of the hugely popular Vera and Shetland series. He was new and green and had some tough acts to follow. It is two years almost to the day since Ann Cleeves launched Detective Matthew Venn into the cutthroat world of crime fiction.

The heron's call ann cleeves