The heady, exuberant, and even poignant days of being a teenager, are undeniably a vehement springboard to life as an adult. The teenage years are, further, a testament to the fact that youthful idealism and thought are forever bound up in one’s identity. Notably, the friendships and romantic entanglements forged at high school are, at their most noble, highly prized and life enriching, and at their worst, divisive and soul destroying.
Such reverberating and stark truths are forensically examined in phenomenally successful and much-loved English author, Ann Cleeves, latest soaring crime novel, “The Rising Tide”.
Set in the North-East of England, predominantly in the buzzing and eclectic town of Kimmerston and on the idyllic and hauntingly beautiful Holy Island off the English coast, this highly nuanced novel begins, in the present, with the fifty year reunion of ‘Only Connect’, an A level (high school senior year) secular retreat for Kimmerston Grammar students from Miss Marshall’s English class.
The original attendees at the retreat fifty years ago were Judy Marshall (teacher) and students Rick Kelsall, Charlotte Thomas, Isobel Hall, Philip Robson, Ken Hampton, Annie Laidler and Daniel Rede. The retreat, taking place in an ex-nuns’ dwelling on Holy Island, was Miss Marshall’s idea for a type of unifying and ideas sharing weekend at mid-term. It was at that first weekend together for the students that fierce friendships were forged and romantic liasions snared.
Every five years thereafter, the students have converged at Pilgrim’s House (the retreat accommodation) to reminisce and catch up on where their lives’ trajectories have taken them. The former students are tellingly described by Ann as “liberal, lefty” and “angst-ridden”.
Horrifically and unexpectedly (or was it?) Isobel took off early from the island in a frenzy of angst and anger from the first reunion in her flimsy car, drowning, after attempting to cross the causeway when the tide was up.
Annie had witnessed Rick and Isobel arguing wildly and frenetically just prior to Isobel’s departure, that devastating day, but was at a loss to know what the subject of their interaction was. Understandably, the former students have never quite recovered from Isobel’s premature death.
Now, after fifty years of first coming to Pilgrim’s House, back on Holy Island for the weekend are Rick, Philip, Annie, Ken and Louisa (Isobel’s younger sister who has been coming to the retreats since she became Ken’s girlfriend and subsequently married him). Rick, always loud and brash, is now a journalist, who has recently been made to resign from his BBC television show on politics, after a young female colleague made sexual assault allegations against him. He is now writing a book, sharing with the others that it will be a novel, a thriller, centred daringly around the events of the first fateful reunion.
Philip is now an Anglican priest, working in Central London, and has mellowed considerably from a somewhat volatile teenager into a serene and content member of the clergy.
Annie, always eager to please, brings numerous and delectable provisions to the weekend gathering, and is well-equipped to, as she co-owns and works in (along with her business partner, Jax) a hugely popular and well-stocked deli in Kimmerston, Bread and Olives.
Ken, a former head teacher, now spends his days in a daze of confusion and abstract thought, having received a recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The eternally loyal Louisa, also a former head teacher, is consistently by Ken’s side, dutiful to the end.
Things at the fifty year reunion take a decidedly dark and sinister turn when Annie discovers Rick hanging from a beam in his bedroom on the Saturday morning. The friends decide that the humiliation of losing his job, and having been the subject of serious allegations, must have got to Rick, and that he must have killed himself.
Before anyone can think about it further, the dowdy, yet razor-sharp and highly formidable, DCI (Inspector) Vera Stanhope from Northumbria Police is called in to investigate, along with her veritably organized, reliable and dedicated team of DC (Detective) Holly Clarke and DS (Detective) Joe Ashworth.
From the get-go, Vera is open minded regarding the investigation, both to the actual cause of death and whom the actual assailant might be if there has been a murder. The analytically detailed Doctor Keating, the pathologist, discovers that poor Rick has actually been smothered with a cushion.
Those attending the retreat with Rick are all possible suspects, a fact Rick’s friends (or are they?) are acutely aware of.
When three days later Charlotte (once married to Rick, and a former model and latterly a life coach and yoga instructor) is found dead in her “fancy” yoga studio, and is again found to have been smothered with a cushion, Vera and her team know they are dealing with a serial killer. As Vera demonstrably tells her team at police headquarters, “We’ve got two high-profile victims on our patch and we need a result fast”.
Are the febrile occurrences and relationships from years past, for the cohort of friends, partners and ex-partners, in any way linked to the crimes of the present? Does Miss Marshall (now Sinclair), now seventy, and working in a charity food bank, have any link to her former students, people she encouraged to think ‘outside the box’ as teenagers?
What possible involvement could Katherine Willmore, the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Northumberland (Vera’s boss) and now married to Daniel, have with the case? Who was the complainant against Rick that saw him ‘pushed’ from his job?
What seedy and festering secrets have the former students been keeping hidden for all these years? Was Isobel’s death accidental, or were dark forces at work? Is Isobel’s death linked to the breathtakingly audacious murders of the unsuspecting Rick and Charlotte?
“The Rising Tide” swept me away by it’s searing intelligence, insight into the human psyche and nuanced geographical, as well as human nature (both the good and bad), descriptions.
Bravo Ann for a grand novel, alternating between the sublime and dark, propelling the reader along a path of great truths, and sometimes deep troughs. Being a keen viewer of the British television series, “Vera” (based on the Vera Stanhope series of books by Ann), I could ‘see’ Vera (played by the indomitable Brenda Blethyn in the television show) investigating with her team, with the attention to detail and facts, that only Vera can.
This is a five star read, and I can’t wait to see what Ann writes next.
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