The Long Call
By Ann Cleeves
Minotaur, 2019

The Long Call, from the award-winning author of the hit TV shows Vera and Shetland, is the first in the Two Rivers series set in North Devon and featuring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. He is gay, which may not seem like a big deal in 2019 except that the detective novel is still a genre where machismo is sine qua non. For me, there are two gay characters in the mystery field that stand out and are worthy of your attention. One is Dave Brandstetter, a ruggedly masculine, highly charismatic insurance claims investigator created by Joseph Hansen. He was introduced in Fadeout (1970) when he was 44-years-old and working for his father, who owns California’s largest insurance company. Brandstetter has a unique capacity to separate the needy from the nefarious. There are twelve Brandstetter novels, the final one being A Country of Old Men (1991), which has him coming out of retirement at seventy for a briskly paced last hurrah.   

Then there is Milo Bernard Sturgis, an openly gay homicide detective in West Los Angeles. He was introduced in Jonathan Kellerman’s When the Bough Breaks (1985) along with Dr. Alex Delaware an openly straight psychologist, and a brilliant one.  Milo is big—six-two, two-twenty—and is almost boyishly handsome even with acne pits that pepper his skin. His dress code is haute thrift shop. As a cop, he’s up there with the best. Almost immediately, Milo and Alex bond, as they share blue collar backgrounds (although Alex is better dressed), offbeat humor, and uncommon compassion in their respective fields. While Sturgis has a knack for piecing together the details of a crime, Delaware can decipher the darkest intents driving the most vicious of perpetrators. They complement each other and Alex is always telling Milo that he would make a great therapist because of the way he listens. As he says: “Milo’s great to have around in—in more ways than one—when your preconceptions get overly calcified.”

So far, they’ve been together for thirty-four novels—the most recent is The Wedding Guest (2019).

This brings me back to The Long Call and Detective Inspector Matthew Venn.  The title, incidentally, is how naturalists designated the cry of the Herring Gull. It’s a bird that is quite common in the North Devon region where Cleeves has set this novel. Its cry has always sounded to Venn “like an articulate howl of pain”—appropriate for the bleak opening that sets the tone:

The day they found the body on the shore, Matthew Venn was already haunted by thoughts of death and dying. He stood outside the North Devon Crematorium on the outskirts of Barnstaple, a bed of purple crocus spread like a pool at his feet, and he watched from a distance as the hearse carried his father to the chapel of rest. 

Venn spent his childhood among the Brethren, a strict evangelical sect led by the magnetic Dennis Salter—once Venn’s trusted mentor. As a teenager he renounced his religion and was shunned by his parents and banished from the community. Now in his late 30s, the tightly wound and reserved Venn is a dedicated, highly capable police officer. His self-description is as someone for whom “optimism had never been his default setting.” He is married to Jonathan Church, who he calls “the love of his life.”  Church, who is less reserved and more upbeat, manages the Woodyard Centre, a multi-faceted arts complex that serves as a day meeting place for adults with learning disabilities. It is also the focal point of much of the novel’s action. 

After his father’s funeral, Venn is flaked out against “the perimeter wall of the cemetery” when he gets a call from his constable Ross May, a colleague he has decidedly mixed feelings about:

Ross’s energy exhausted him. Matthew could feel it fizzing through the ether and into his ear. Ross was a pacer and a shouter, a pumper of iron. A member of the local running club and a rugby player. A team player except, it seemed when he was at work.

Ross tells his boss to get back because a man’s body has turned up on the beach at Crow Point, where Matthew and Jon live. When Matthew gets to the scene, Ross and his sergeant Jen Rafferty are waiting for him:

The Puritan in Matthew disapproved of Jen…. She;d had her kids too young, had bailed out of an abusive marriage … Now her kids were teens and she was enjoying the life she’d missed out on in her twenties…. She was red-haired and fiery. Fit and gorgeous and she liked her men the same way. But despite himself, Matthew admired her guts and her spirit. She brought fun and laughter to the office and she was the best detective he’d ever worked with.

He learns that a dog-walker spotted the body. It’s laid out on his back in the sand. He can see the stab wound in the chest, the bloodstained clothing. On his neck is a subtly drawn tattoo of an albatross. A scrap of paper in his back pocket is all the ID they have. May and Jen check it out and find a house owned by Caroline, daughter of Woodyard trustee Christopher Preece, who shares it with Gaby Henry, an artist in residence at Woodyard. They have a short-term lodger whom Gaby identifies as Simon Walden from their description and a selfie she has. Caroline works for her father’s mental health charity also housed at the arts complex. She felt sorry for Walden, who was living with crushing guilt from a drunken driving accident that killed a young girl, and offered him a place to stay.

Further investigation reveals that Simon was hardly a charity case. He was a respected chef who had run his own restaurant and he’d just closed a real estate deal that netted him a small fortune. It makes his choice of lifestyle as puzzling as his murder.

The Long Call is a richly atmospheric novel that explores love and pain in many guises. It is a beautifully written, character driven work whose core is hubris and dark, hidden desires. The key is relationships – what rips them asunder and pulls them back together. Cleeves is an experienced author at the top of her game.

—Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.