By Alicia Ward
Adrian Pitches interviewed Ann Cleeves at The Exchange, North Shields, last night, as she launched The Dying Light, her fortieth novel and fourth Matthew Venn story. It opens on a picture-perfect white art-deco bungalow on the North Devon coast, with a crystalline pool glittering and Lundy Island in the distance. One girl is drowned and another missing at the holiday home of a young politician. It is a lovely view, and of course there is a body in it.
Cleeves was open about the inspirations for her detective and for this story-line. Venn’s search for certainty through the police force traces back to her own childhood evangelical friend and family, sure that on the day of reckoning only believers will be saved. Also from a real-life low point in her own adult life, the kindness of gay friends finds its echo in Venn’s own identity. The book also carries her unease about social media, conspiracy theories and what she sees as ghoulish over-identification with sensationalised news stories. She added a keen observation that young people, pushed into screen-based socialising, may have lost some of the judgement that leads to real life healthy relationship choices.
Her method is the real delight. Twenty years with a publisher but no marketing spend and no advances, meant writing had to be fun to be worth continuing. Hence her approach. Surprisingly she starts without knowing ‘whodunnit’. For The Dying Light she began with an image of a white house and the idea of a drowning, then spent time introducing characters and floating possible killers until she worked out the culprit for herself. Americans, she told us, call this being a “pantser”, as opposed to a “plotter” with a wall of Post-it notes. The killer stays secret from her as well as from the reader, which may explain why the final reveal feels earned. Meanwhile, her early A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy has reached the Sunday Times bestseller list more than thirty years after publication, to her evident amusement.
Having briefly pondered a leap into Booker-style literary fiction, she knows where her strengths lie, characterisation, with murder as the catalyst, and the satisfying narrative arc of murder, suspects, resolution. The CWA Diamond Dagger award suggests she chose her genre well. In volatile times, she suggested, we crave the reassuring restoration of order her books provide, though she does have to murder someone first.
Translated into thirty languages, she is a hit everywhere from Australia to Bulgaria, Korea and Japan. Fans can look forward to Jimmy Perez returning to Orkney this winter, and Vera’s last case next year. Yet the warmest moments of the evening belonged to home. Cleeves is proudest that The Long Call helped to shape The Woodyard, a charity tackling isolation and loneliness, and the Reading for Wellbeing initiatives that followed. North Tyneside, among the regions most in need, has been a leader, with a worker and group based in North Shields library.
The joy of waking up in her own bed, with a cup of tea and a murder to look forward to has long been a balm for her, and sharing that in her adopted North Tyneside home clearly matters. The evening let her shine a light on The Exchange, which she praised for boosting engagement in arts, music, drama and books. She also championed independent bookshops, including this evening’s host, The Bound, with a special edition of the new novel available only from ‘indie’ bookstores. Her fiction has repeatedly returned to northeast locations, and last night it was plain this reflects real affection for the place, though with a serving of grisly murder on the side. With the whole world to choose from, Ann Cleeves chose to call North Tyneside home, and we could not be prouder to have her.
