The Rising Tide (Vera Stanhope)

Product Information

The Rising Tide is published in the UK by Pan Macmillan: the hardback was published on 1st September 2022 (ISBN: 978-1-5098-8961-7), and the paperback on 16th March 2023 (978-1-5098-8965-5). She said: “Everyone needs a huge amount of stamina to get through long days of filming with often a lot of travel to and from set. Plus (and worse) there is some that awful fat-shaming bullshit AGAIN that I can only assume means Cleeves herself is fat-phobic because otherwise why would multiple characters repeatedly describe Vera's body in such mean ways?

The mystery was also a little sub-par this time around in my opinion, and the ending was heartbreaking. They gather together for a hearty evening meal with plenty of alcohol and discuss memories and their present lives. Vera, with the help of her team, must painstakingly dissect their lives, looking for the truth of what has really happened.Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary. Cleeves presents a myriad of suspects, trying to glean the motive, which is not at all obvious, and fully engages the reader.

Their former teacher, Judy Marshall, still lives on the island quite differently from her new age mindset. To top it off, she can’t dress either, because the first impression others have of her is how terrible her clothes are. Rick has just stepped back from his popular show on BBC being accused of some unseemingly behavior with a female staff member. Cleeves crafts a clever central puzzle, then confers remarkable emotional complexity using her keenly drawn characters’ advancing age, wistful nostalgia, and thorny shared history. And there had been a connection, so strong and fierce that after fifty years the tie was still there, unbroken and still worth celebrating.Cleeves turns the location of Holy Island, that simply drips with atmosphere, into a wonderful central background character, popular with tourists, with its menacing mists and fogs, and the dangers of the rising tide.

Yet, somehow, every mention of Vera Stanhope implies she eats like she’s never going to get another meal, or like her meal will be taken from her so she shovels it in as fast as she can and is constantly thinking about eating. The pupils - Philip Robson, Annie Laidler, Daniel Rede, Rick Kelsall, Isobel Hall, Kenneth Hampton and Charlotte Thomas - bonded with one another and agreed to have a reunion on Holy Island every five years.

It was as inevitable as the water, which twice a day slid across the sand and mud of the shore until the causeway was covered. This was the first Vera book I've read (thought I'm a faithful fan of the TV series), and I've come to the surprising conclusion that the television version is better.