The Running Grave and The Raging Storm – compelling continuations of popular crime series!
Audio version
Many crime fans, like me, have been excited to follow the new series by Ann Cleeves - The Two Rivers. With the Vera and Shetland Series’ she has amassed a vast following for both her books and subsequent TV series. This new series is gathering a similar following with Ben Aldridge starring as Detective Inspector Matthew Venn in the TV adaptation of the first two books. The Raging Storm is the third book in the series.
As usual Ann Cleeves has created an interesting back story for her main character. Matthew Venn was brought up in a closed religious community in North Devon and his history is key to the development of his character as he leaves the community accepting that his homosexuality would not be embraced. Turning away from his faith results in him being ‘cast out’ and alienated from his parents but his choice of career, becoming a policeman, gives him the boundaries and structure that he craves and his colleagues in the Force become closer than his family had been. He becomes a great detective making full use of the discipline and dedication that was encouraged as a child and at the same 
time embracing his new life by marrying his partner. The first two books in the series, The Long Call and The Heron’s Cry, have established his character and The Raging Storm focuses on his return to the village where he grew up - with all the hurt and baggage that accompanies that - to investigate when the body of a local legend is found off the coast during a raging storm.
Society has a fascination for cults and closed communities such as this and it is interesting to read about the long-term effects that such organisations can have on their members. Ann Cleeves handles Matthew’s mental struggles with the sensitive light touch that we have come to expect of her writing.
The Running Grave by Robert
Galbraith is another example of this fascination– the author has admitted that basing a book on a cult was always something that would happen at some point and true to form this is an in-depth study into one - and, though fictitious, includes elements from detailed research into many different cults. This is the seventh in the Cormoran Strike series where his business partner Robin volunteers to go undercover in a religious cult rumoured to brainwash and coerce their recruits. Their detective agency has been engaged to try to liberate a young man from the clutches of the Universal Humanitarian Church and Strike knows the danger that Robin would be in and is reluctant to allow her to go. An added complication for him is that the location of the ‘Church’s’ headquarters is a farm in Norfolk where, as a child he lived 
briefly with his mother and sister. It was a commune at that time and his memories of their time there are not happy ones.
For a large part of this book Robin and Strike are apart – she in Norfolk and he in London but their relationship continues to sizzle under the ‘will they won’t they’ tension that has developed tantalisingly slowly over the six previous books and surprisingly the secret written communications between them serve to bring them both to a closer understanding of the connection that they have despite the distance between them. You will need to read it to find out if there is a resolution to the sexual tension between them, however – no spoilers here!
This is a very dark story with a lot at stake for both Strike and Robin. There is always tension and danger in the Strike novels but this is intense. Within the confines of the cult the heady mix of religion, myth and mind control creates a world view that allows societal norms to be undermined and makes way for coercion and abuse in multiple forms. Robin has underestimated her own strength in maintaining the persona she takes on and the continuous repelling the mind control she is subjected to is exhausting, taking all of her will power to fight. We question whether she will emerge a shadow of her former self – or indeed if she will emerge at all.
Both these books are ones to be immersed in – page turners, but long enough to savour, to get lost in their worlds with the characters as our companions – and that is the hook to these series’. The personal stories that emerge are as compelling as the mysteries that they solve and I can’t wait for the next instalments to both.
Borrow the following titles from the Libraries NI catalogue:
The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
