When Covid came a calling

The photo is of flowers and a card from my eldest for Mother's day which seems such a long time ago now.

So it feels like ages since I visited my little blog space.  For a while now we have been saying when we get covid and not if as it seemed inevitable that at some stage it would find its way to our door and that is exactly what happened. Thankfully we were all able to ride the storm without anyone becoming really poorly but like so many it has left us fatigued and I think those effects will be with us for a while. 

I have however got through a further three Ann Cleeves Vera Stanhope novels.  I think I have just one or two more until I am up to date and ready for the release of the next Vera story due out in the autumn.

The Glass Room is book 5 in the Vera Stanhope series 

DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her neighbours keep her well-supplied in homebrew and conversation. But when one of them goes missing, her path leads her to more than a missing friend . . .

Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writer’s House, a country retreat for aspiring authors. Things get complicated when a body is discovered and Vera’s neighbour is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She’s too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting and she’s never been one to follow the rules. Vera must find a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real . . .

Silent Voices is book 4 of the Vera Stanhope series

No murder is ever simple . . .

When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, at first, she thinks it is a death from natural causes. But then Vera spots ligature marks around the victim’s throat and has another murder case on her hands.

The victim is Jenny Lister, who was an experienced social worker, but her neighbours are quick to inform Vera about Jenny’s involvement in a notorious case. A young child tragically died and a member of Jenny’s team was subsequently fired and vilified by the media.

As Vera tries to pry information from the secretive community another body is found, and Vera finds herself in a race against time to stop the killer.

Hidden Depths is book 3 of the Vera Standhope series

A killer who is making an art out of murder . . .

A hot summer on the Northumberland coast and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers.

This stylized murder scene has captured Inspector Vera Stanhope’s attention. And then another body is discovered in a rock pool, the corpse again strewn with flowers. Vera must work quickly to find this killer who is making art out of death.

As local residents are forced to share their deepest, darkest secrets, the killer watches, waits and plans to prepare another beautiful, watery grave . . .

 I enjoy the Vera Stanhope series, although the TV series is very close to the original novels you can read them out of sequence.

I also read the last ever in the Shetland series. 

An English family moves to the islands in order to give their autistic son a better life. A young nanny is found dead in their barn and suspicion is raised as to whether she was having an affair  with husband, 

DI Perex is brought into investigate but he knows this will mean working with his on/off lover DI Willow Reeves. 

 I still have two of the Shetland books to read and probably should have read these in order  but I really enjoyed it all the same.  Unlike the Vera Stanhope books these novels are not exactly the same as the TV series.  Whilst some of the characters are the same DI Perez's step daughter is still only a young girl in the books.   The storylines in the TV are very different to those of the novels they were based on but that has made the novels all the more enjoyable for me.   Not quite as fast pace as the other novels in the series but still a fitting end and probably the right time to say goodbye to this beloved character. 

It's not that single mum Charlotte Newman is completely and utterly obsessed with crafting, necessarily.

Sure, she has balls of wool stashed everywhere like a squirrel stores nuts and more needles than a tattoo parlour. But that doesn't mean she has a problem, right?

Finding herself between jobs, Charlotte fills her time teaching crafting skills at the local nursing home. Encouraged by how positively the residents respond, the possibility of a career doing what she adores fills her mind.

The first step towards that ambition is creating a crafting hub for the community – The Crafternoon Sewcial Club.

When a local charity announces a major knitting-themed fundraiser, Charlotte sees the ideal stage to put her new club firmly on the crafting map and drum up new members in the process.

Unfortunately, not everybody is on board with her vision for a crafting club, as it turns out. Indeed, some are even hoping to see Charlotte's dream come crashing down around her.

Still, she won't let a minor issue like that derail her plans…

To ensure victory, then, she'll need to rally her new members and ask her friends from the nursing home to get those needles clicking faster than a hummingbird's wings!

And finally I went for a complete departure from Ann Cleeves and read The Crafternoon Sewcial Club by J C Williams.  It kept popping up as a recommended read and whist I wanted something that was a light read I wouldn't necessarily have gone for this book ordinarily.   I'm glad I did and it would make a great holiday read for anyone lucky enough to be escaping to somewhere hot or not as the case may be. 

On the good old telebox when I managed to stay a wake I did watch a whole range of things that I had either missed or didn't know about until I happen to come across them,

The Fall starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan was absolutely fantastic and I don't know how I missed it when it was on originally.  The story of a serial killer is told over three series and if you are looking for something to watch on a wet and windy day I would definitely recommend you watch this series.  There aren't may things I can get the bearded one to watch in succession but so grip were we that we spent an entire day watching all three series. I believe it is still available on BBC iPlayer

The Tower shown on ITV in 2021 was also on my radar of things to watch.  Set in London the story begins with a young girl and a policeman falling from the roof of  a high rise block of flats. No one knows how the accident happened except for three people and two of them are now dead.  Anti-corruption officer Sarah Collins is tasked with finding out what happened prior to finding themselves on the roof and what lead to the death of police officer and a young teenage girl.  Based on the Kate London novels Postmortem the series is definitely worth watching if you didn't catch it first time around and still available on ITV hub. 

My last offering for today is the series Hidden starring Sian Reese-Williams.  She plays the character of DI Cadi John.  This is a  series from BBC Wales,  predominantly English speaking with some subtitles for the parts spoken in welsh but easily able to follow in either language.  Set over 3 series you follow Cadi's return home to Wales to help her sisters look after her terminally ill father.  During this time she learns a lot about her family, the place she grew up and herself.  

Again not normally I would of chosen to watch but I am so glad I did and thoroughly enjoyed the series. 

Well I think I have rambled on enough for one sitting, hopefully won't be away so long next time at which time I will catch you up on my crafty endeavors.  Until then take care everyone. 

Mx