Old-Fashioned Murder Mystery Is Alive and Well in Ann Cleeves’ Latest Novel, ‘The Raging Storm’

In The Raging Storm, the third book in her Two Rivers series, best-selling British crime author Ann Cleeves, 69, shifts the focus to a “very different setting” she says, from the first two books, The Long Call and The Heron’s Cry. “Somewhere a little more gray and bleak.” The result is an old-fashioned murder mystery, drawing on the themes in books like Treasure Island. “I’m returning to the classic adventure stories where superstition can play a part,” she explains. 

At the beginning of The Raging Storm, sailor Jem Rosco arrives in the fictional town of Greystone, Devon, during an autumn gale and just as abruptly disappears. Soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy anchored offshore, and it’s up to Detective Inspector Matthew Venn and his team to figure out why.

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Cleeves, who lives in Whitley Bay, U.K., is a New York Times best-selling author of more than 35 critically acclaimed novels. The Long Call introduced Venn and launched the Two Rivers series in 2019. The Heron’s Cry debuted in 2021, bringing back Venn, and detectives Jen Rafferty and Ross May. The Raging Storm brings a new, uncomfortable case for Venn and his team to figure out and AARP is thrilled to offer members the opportunity to read it for free, along with the novella The Girls on the Shore — an appetizer of sorts for the third novel.

The creator of the popular detectives Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez, Cleeves, continues writing prolifically: “I might be past the age of retirement, but I write a book a year, and there’s lots of travel now involved in promotion.”

And if that weren’t enough to keep Cleeves busy, she manages to find time for her seven grandchildren and for walking, which she finds relaxing. “Most afternoons I go for a wander along the seafront,” she says. “Really, though, I have the most fun writing.”