The Dark Wives

Author/Guide: Ann Cleeves

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: The 11th title in the VERA series!

ISBN: 978-1529077742
Genre: Crime, Police Procedural

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What you need to know before your trail

A body is found by an early morning dog walker on the common outside Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who never showed up to work.

DI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate. Her only clue is the disappearance of fourteen-year-old resident Chloe. Vera can’t bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can’t dismiss the possibility.

Vera, Joe and new team member Rosie are soon embroiled in the case, but when a second body is found near the Three Dark Wives standing stones in the wilds of the Northumbrian countryside, folklore and fact begin to collide.

Vera knows she has to find Chloe to get to the truth, but it seems that the dark secrets in their community may be far more dangerous than she could ever have believed. . .

Locations

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Northumberland
D: Kimmerston
E: Holy Island

Travel Guide

Vera locations

Lots of lovely familiar Vera locations here with the added charm of Cullercoats where a character lives.

The coastal village of Longwater is fictional as is the monument and crime scene of Three Dark Wives.

“Cullercoats was a village on the coast, part of the sprawl between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay. A sheltered bay held between two piers, once it had been a fishing village. The American artist Winslow Homer had painted the boats and the fisherwomen and the storm coming in from the sea. Now one row of picturesque fisherman’s cottages remained, the rest knocked down and replaced in the seventies by a small estate of flats and terraced houses.”

The home where the crime takes place is close to Kimmerston in Northumberland so plenty of gorgeous scenery evoked as is familiar in VERA.