The rising and waning tides impose a parenthetical relationship upon both residents and the dwindling swell of tourists to the historic Holy Island of Lindisfarne in October. A foggy atmosphere that seems to manipulate both time and dimension obscures allegiances between local people who are deeply bound by the gravitational pull of their shared secrets, a group of old schoolmates’ with a seeming inability to transform itself. Holly is worried she is going to be like Vera, alone and single and nothing to show for it but her job. The Rising Tide" takes place about a year after the events in the last novel. Vera is about to go away with her next door neighbor to a book retreat. She's thrilled though when a possible suspicious death on Holy Island could be a murder. With Vera, Joe, and Holly on Holy Island they realize that a group of friends who have been coming to the island for 50 years may know more than they are saying after their friend is found dead by hanging. Per usual, Cleeves gives us perspective not on just the group of friends, but also Vera, Joe, and Holly. Cleeves excels in character development. There are multiple POVs, including each of the team and some of the suspects. The almost rivalry between Joe and Holly works well and I like that this team isn’t the seamless group that other series have. The ending really caught me off guard. For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .

The history of this group was interesting and, of course, they all became suspects. There were other suspects as well. There were a lot of avenues to investigate and Vera's team stayed busy following all the leads. I've ready quite of few books in this series and have enjoyed them overall. Vera and her team work well together and each seem to have their own special expertise. I like the characters very much. I was disappointed by how many times the author mentioned that Vera was overweight, though. What's up with this? The ending to this was a real surprise to me. Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband. There’s a swathe of clues to go through, and false starts, overlayed by the sense of time and Hector’s bits of nonsense bullying Vera from the grave. The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine).Vera Stanhope. A dumpy woman with an incisive mind, a terrier-like hold on problems, and the habit of chivying her staff to get results, sometimes pitting them against each other, all in the name of solving the case.

To all those who love a really good murder mystery with so many twists and turns to make your head spin and keep you guessing who did it until the end, this is the book for you!!!! I've learned a valuable lesson: beware of high school reunions,even if they are every 5 years, with all the same " friends" who you thought you knew so well, you will find out that you never really knew them at all!!! Despite my levity, I was engrossed in the story from beginning to end. I tried to slow down my reading because who knows when or if there will be another Vera book but I couldn't control myself. I had to find out "who dunnit." Read all about The Rising Tide here. Or visit Lindisfarne, and the setting for The Rising Tide, with The Book Trail. VERA is filmed at locations from across Northumberland and Tyneside: if the scenery gives you an urge to visit Northumberland, you can read what Ann has to say about the county here. The Guardian also published Ann's short guide to Vera's Northumberland.All eleven previous series of TV's crime drama VERA are now available to fans in both the UK and the US. They have been widely broadcast; VERA was nominated for an Edgar Award, for Dark Road, the first episode of series 6 (an original screenplay by Martha Hillier). VERA was ranked sixth best TV series of all time in a recent poll. In February 2019 it won the Judges' Award at the Royal Television Society NE Awards in Gateshead.