About 4 years I decided to try a book by Ann Cleeves based liking the Shetland TV series which was based on a series of her books. The book I tried was the first of her Two Rivers series featuring Detective Matthew Venn.  Since then, I have read the second of this series as well as several from the Shetland and Vera novels.

This is the third of the Two Rivers series and is titled “The Raging Storm”.  I thank Netgalley for the chance to read this before publication.

Based on my experience, when you read an Ann Cleeves novel, you can be sure it will be a great mystery, the characters will be well developed, and you will feel a strong sense of the location.   In this book the sense of place was very strong. It takes place in a remote sea-side village inhabited by many Brethren, a religious community which Venn fled many years ago

I think that although the author gives sufficient background to understand the characters from previous books, the reader may have a better appreciation of some key characters if they had read earlier books in the series (especially “The Long Call”).

That said, I have sometimes read a book in the later part of a series which I enjoy and then had the pleasure of reading earlier books and seeing how the main characters developed.

I liked this book a lot and highly recommend it.  The book is  scheduled to be released on September 5 so you have a while to look forward to it and maybe read the earlier books.