When young teacher Judy Marshall wanted to inspire several of her students, she arranged for them to go to Holy Island. Since it’s a tidal island, they spent the night there, enjoying each other’s company and waiting for the tide to go back down so they could get to the mainland. There were six of them that first time, Annie and Dan, Isobel and Philip, Rick and Charlotte and Ken. That was 50 years ago. They had come back every five years.
Annie still lived locally, working at a beloved bakery and cafe. She and Dan had divorced long ago, but he was still close too, building up his family’s small rental business into a successful business of holiday rentals. Philip had become an Anglican priest. Ken had Alzheimer’s, but he still came to the reunion with the help of his wife Louisa (three years behind them at school, so she hadn’t been invited to Only Connect).
Even though Charlotte had left the original Only Connect early, she and Rick had eventually married. She had become an actress and model while he found success on his talk show. After their divorce, Charlotte had moved back to the area and opened a yoga studio. Rick had just left his television show, or been asked to leave, after several women had accused him of impropriety. At the reunion, he announced that he had decided to write a book, a novel, based on their past.
They all couldn’t help but wonder if that meant he would be writing about that first weekend, or worse, about that first reunion, when Isobel had decided just a few minutes too late to drive home. Her car got swept away as she tried to drive back to the mainland. But it had been an accident, a tragedy based on the impulse of youth and bad timing. Right?
But when Rick is found dead in his room, there are so many questions about what happened. And Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope plans to get all the answers. As Vera and her fellow officers look into Rick’s death, they are also trying to figure out what happened on Holy Island all those years ago. As they wade through the secrets and the lies, going back in time to the original sins, the police of Northumbria investigate and interrogate until they find the killer. But will they find the killer before they strike again?
The Rising Tide is the latest in Anne Cleeves’ bestselling series about DI Vera Stanhope and her team. This compelling story of a group of students returning to be together through fifty years and the secrets they kept. The unique setting of the tidal island increases the intensity, and hearing the story from several different character perspectives adds a fuller picture of what happened to these friends through the years.
I listened to The Rising Tide on audio, and I thought narrator Janine Birkett did an amazing job bringing this story to life. One drawback to listening to the audio is that there is a large cast of characters and sometimes I struggled to keep them all straight. But I thought that Birkett captured Vera’s intelligence and contradictions in a way that brought her to life, and I really enjoyed getting to listen to this book. The Rising Tide is an excellent addition to the Vera Stanhope novels, and I think fans of the books and fans of the television series will want to spend time with her on Holy Island.
A copy of the audio book of The Rising Tide was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks, but I also won a copy through a giveaway on Goodreads.
