Sometimes crime strikes too close to home . . .
DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation. But when one of them goes missing, her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . .
Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writer’s House, a country retreat for aspiring authors. Things get complicated when a body is discovered and Vera’s neighbour is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She’s too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting and she’s never been one to follow the rules. Vera must find a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real . . .
Ann Cleeves
Cleeves was born in Herefordshire and brought up in north Devon where she attended Barnstaple Grammar School;studied English at the University of Sussex, but dropped out and then took up various jobs, including cook at the Fair Isle bird observatory, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer, library outreach worker, and child care officer.
Television adaptations
Cleeves's work was first optioned for television after producer Elaine Collins discovered a copy of one of the Vera novels, The Crow Trap, while searching for holiday reading in an Oxfam shop in north London where she lived. Collins was the books executive for ITV Studios, which was looking for a new female detective to fill its Sunday night drama slot. The Vera Stanhope novels have been dramatised as the TV detective series Vera beginning in 2011 with 14 series produced up until 2025. Cleeves has writing credits for Series 13, Episode 1, 'Fast Love' alongside Paul Matthew Thompson. She appeared in the special "Vera... Farewell Pet," which reflected and celebrated the 14 years of the show.
Collins went on to buy the rights to multiple of Cleeves' stories, the Shetland novels for the BBC; and the Two Rivers novels as the TV series The Long Call. Some of the later episodes in the Vera and Shetland series were original scripts based on Cleeves's characters.
Personal life
She lives in Whitley Bay, and she was widowed in December 2018. Her husband was Tim Cleeves, a birdwatcher whose interest in ornithology Ann came to share. She has two daughters.
Honours, awards, and media appearances
In 2006, she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for her novel Raven Black, and in 2008 she was elected to the prestigious Detection Club. In 2014, Cleeves was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sunderland. the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Also in 2015, she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library UK Crime Writers' Association award for an author's body of work in British libraries (UK).
Cleeves was chosen as the 2017 recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers' Association for "sustained excellence" in crime fiction. In February 2019, Cleeves appeared on Desert Island Discs. Cleeves was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to reading and libraries.
In July 2022, Cleeves was awarded an honorary D.Litt. from Newcastle University for services to reading and libraries.
On 15 September 2024, Cleeves' life was featured in an episode of the BBC Radio 3 series Private Passions.
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