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Harbour Street (Vera Stanhope)

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Harbour Street is the next spellbinding installment in Ann Cleeves' series of crime novels about Vera Stanhope, played in the TV detective drama Vera by Brenda Blethyn. SPOILER: And like almost all Vera episodes, there is always some bat-shiat crazy woman or two to cause all the trouble. I can't wait to see the rest of season 4, to see if its always a crazy woman. Cleeves offers up evocative settings and flawed characters with depth, making her mysteries wonderfully addictive. Her latest is no exception." Why would such well dressed and elegant lady find herself living in Mardle and more importantly who would want to kill her?

There were snatched pictures too of a mannequin presumably being used to mark the filming position for a body on the beach, apparently washed up not far from Tynemouth Priory. Weekly Top 10 Programmes: ITV+1 w/e 1 May 2011". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board . Retrieved 2 July 2011. Vera must uncover a life of secrets and lies when Owen Thorne, a well-loved family man, plummets to his death from a multi-storey car park.Weekly Top 10 Programmes: ITV HD w/e 15 May 2011". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board . Retrieved 2 July 2011. Weekly Top 10 Programmes: ITV+1 w/e 29 April 2012". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board . Retrieved 8 May 2012.

Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday festivities. As she stands on the silent, snow-covered station platform, Vera feels a familiar buzz of anticipation, sensing that this will be a complex and unusual case. Soon Vera and Joe are on their way to the south Northumberland town of Mardle, where Margaret lived, to begin their inquiry. Vera investigates the death of a local lad whose body is found wrapped in plastic sheets at a rural teenage hangout. I didn't expect the final reveal. Those cleverly disguised dead ends had me completely fooled, which is just the way I like it. But Harbour Street is one of those books that you don't want to finish, because the journey has been so engrossing and enjoyable, and I was sorry to say goodbye to Mardle." The first episode was set on the Farne Islands and saw Vera take the sea air as she travelled over there by boat from the mainland. And the actress told how the experience was a new one for her too, and she came in for quite a soaking.

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Weekly Top 30 Programmes: ITV w/e 1 May 2011". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. Archived from the original on 15 December 2012 . Retrieved 2 July 2011. Cleeves expertly handles the interplay among Vera - outsized both in stature and personality - her staff, and the villagers... You don't have to be a fan of the TV show...to enjoy this top-notch police procedural." It is not just the Northumberland landscape that is featured as we also get a short tour around the city of Newcastle itself – Filming of the first episode of series 10 had finished by May 31 then by July they were halfway through the whole series and other locations since then included Port of Tyne international passenger terminal in North Shields which, eagle-eyed viewers might recall, featured in a previous episode of Vera in 2017. Mardle wasn’t a place for tourists, even in the summer. There was nothing beyond the fisheries except the harbour, enclosed by the wall. The boats there were dark shadows, half-hidden by the drifting flakes.

Joe and his little girl Jessie are on a train when Jessie notices that another passenger, elderly Margaret Kraszewski, has been killed with a single stab wound. Vera visits the coastal town of Mardle, where Margaret lodged with singer Kate Darrow, her two children and boyfriend Stuart. They all praise Margaret as an almost saintly woman and are amazed that anybody would want to kill her. Margaret volunteered at a women's hostel and when Dee, an alcoholic prostitute who lived there, is also found dead Vera suspects a connection, especially as Margaret wanted to report something to the police just before she died. Pub landlady Valerie Furlow tells Vera that Margaret and Dee were good friends who once lived together in the same house on Harbour Street. She believes that Margaret's Polish husband was violent to her and, as he disappeared suddenly thirty years ago, Vera wonders if he was murdered. The chief beneficiary from Margaret's will proves to be Dee and Vera learns that years ago Dee was a rape victim whom certain people set out to avenge. Now another rape victim provides a clue to Margaret's killer. — don @ minifie-1 Actress Brenda Blethyn filming the latest series of the ITV drama Vera on Whitley Bay beach in North Tyneside (Image: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire) Series 8 Joe's daughter is a witness to the death of a pensioner, seemingly stabbed, on a rush hour train she and her father were travelling on. Her seemingly quiet life turns out to be anything but as Vera's investigation begins to unravel a tangled web of lies and deceit. An old friend of Vera's father appears to hold the key to the entire mystery, which involves unraveling a murder committed thirty years previously, a rape, and an affair which nobody suspected would be likely to have taken place. Vera realises that the answer may lie in events which have started to repeat themselves. Vera is called to the University of Northumberland when Jamie Marshall, a young, promising journalism student, plummets to his death from the top of a disused science building. With no eyewitnesses and no immediate leads, Vera turns to friends and family to glean all she can about Jamie, and to discover who might have wanted him dead. Her investigation delves further into Jamie’s academic and personal life, as it becomes apparent that all is not as it seems. His sunny persona is betrayed by vlog posts that cast Jamie in a different light altogether, with anger and resentment bubbling to the surface. But what was Jamie railing against?Told with piercing prose and a forensic eye, Ann Cleeves' gripping new novel explores what happens when a community closes ranks to protect their own - and at what point silent witnesses become complicit. Cleeves also has this annoying tic where whenever the point-of-view character asks a question, you'll have a bit of interior monologue where they explain exactly what they're thinking. It underestimates both the quality of her writing and the intelligence of the reader, and once you've noticed it, you can't ignore it (sorry for inflicting it on you now). Very seemed more cheerful in this, as if she's lightening up. I think losing Joe will be very sad for her, as she seems fond of his family as well. Brenda Blethyn is wonderful as Vera, with her sly smile, her way of questioning a suspect, and the stories she tells. Three and a half stars. This was my first read by this author so I knew nothing about D.I. Vera Stanhope before coming to this novel. It didn't matter. What I needed to know was revealed in the story. I liked Vera and I liked her offsider Detective Joe Ashworth. Actually, he would make an interesting character for his own series. Weekly Top 10 Programmes: ITV HD w/e 20 May 2012". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board . Retrieved 28 May 2012.

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