Ann Cleeves—New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—returns with the extraordinary third in the Two Rivers series.

Fierce winds, dark secrets, deadly intentions.

When Jem Rosco—sailor, adventurer, and legend—blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. But just as abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again, and soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.

This is an uncomfortable case for Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Greystone is a place he visited as a child, a community he parted ways with. Superstition and rumor mix with fact as another body is found, and Venn finds his judgment clouded.

As the winds howl, and Venn and his team investigate, he realizes that no one, including himself, is safe from Scully Cove’s storm of dark secrets.

Celebrity adventurer Jem Rosco returns to the isolated area where he grew up. He is there, so he says, to meet someone and will not be there long. Just as the town gets used to him being part of their lives he disappears only to turn up naked and dead in an anchored dinghy on a stormy night.

Detective Inspector Matthew Venn and his team comes to the village of  Greystone to find the murderer but the residents of the insular town are not too cooperative with outsiders and, more importantly, non-believers who are not members of the church the majority of them belong to. Matthew, who left the church long ago, is uncomfortable as several of the townsfolk are people he knew as a child through the church.  The town’s distrust of outsiders coupled with Jem’s secrecy about so much of his life make this a challenging case and then there is a second death.

Our recurring characters are well-fleshed-out and are showing signs of growth from book to book.  Sergeant Jen Rafferty, a divorced single mother with two teens is a vital part of the investigation while Ross May, the other member of the team, is impatient and, to a degree, not very likeable. Matthew is a bit of a tortured soul - a former member of a very conservative church, almost a cult, he is coming to terms still with breaking away, coming out as gay and marrying a man. His husband, Jonathan, is very different from Matthew and we are also seeing him grow and learning more about him.

The murder is well-plotted and I did not suspect who the murderer was until just before Matthew came to the same conclusion. I am enjoying this series and look forward to the next book. Highly recommended ~~ Stephanie L Bannon

For more titles by Ann Cleeves click here