Happy belated Mother's Day to you and yours! This month's pick was Harbour Street, by Ann Cleeves. Up next for June is Gunflint Falling, by Cary Griffin. Please be advised, we have very limited copies of Gunflint Falling. We'll do our best to get the copies we do have circulated as quickly and efficiently as possible, but in the meantime, if you have an opportunity to find a copy elsewhere~ we would encourage you to do so! Also, if you happen to not need a copy of this book, would you mind leaving a comment down below to let me know? It helps us circulate books at optimal efficiency! Thanks!
Speaking of Cary Griffin, The Perham Area Public Library is hosting him on Tuesday, June 18th, at 2:00pm. He'll be with us to discuss his latest book and take any questions anyone may have. Please get it on your calendars and plan to join us!
To the book!
As the snow falls thickly on Newcastle, the
shouts and laughter of Christmas revelers break the muffled silence.
Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along in the
jostling crowd onto the Metro. But when the train is stopped due
to the bad weather, and the other passengers fade into the swirling
snow, Jessie notices that an old lady hasn't left the train: Margaret
Krukowski has been fatally stabbed as she sat on the crowded train.
Nobody, including the policeman himself, sees the stabbing take place.
Margaret's murderer is seemingly invisible; her killing motiveless. Why
would anyone want to harm this reserved, elegant lady?
Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday festivities. Soon Vera and Joe are on their way to the town of Mardle, where Margaret lived, to begin their inquiry. Then, just days later, a second woman is murdered. Vera knows that to find the key to this new killing she needs to understand what had been troubling Margaret so deeply before she died - before another life is lost. But why are the residents of Harbour Street so reluctant to speak?
Remember last month when I said that every once in a great long while we more or less agree on a book? Well, somehow, it has happened again! Overall, I think we all felt the same way about Harbour Street. We thought Cleeves did a great job with character development, we found everyone believable and relatable. We liked Vera and Joe the best. We thought there was good scene development, it left you feeling cold and damp, right along with the characters. We were pleasantly surprised to find that even though this is #6 in a series, we thought it stood alone just fine.
Our few criticisms would be that the timeline seemed off somehow. It opens with the hustle of Christmas celebrations and ends with the case being solved and an invitation to grab a drink for New Years... we all felt like it seemed like an awful long book, with a whole lot of active investigation happening, to span a mere 6 or 7 days... we didn't believe the three different murders could have been solved in that short time. We didn't care for all the extra characters or criminal plot lines tucked into it. We thought the whole part about the halfway house could have been excluded. Probably the entire Malcolm bits as well, though we did wonder whatever happened to him in the end. No one saw the killer coming, or had the faintest notion it would have been them~ one member mentioned they don't like reading a mystery they have no chance of solving before the books end.
In the end, no one loved it and no one loathed it, rather, we landed somewhere in the middle of all of that. No one feels compelled to pick up another Ann Cleeves book, but could appreciate her spin on a cozy mystery all the same.
Let us know your take on the book down below! 👇
Did you like Harbour Street? Fans of the book also enjoyed, The Last Remains, by Elly Griffiths, Past Lying, by Val McDermid, and The Hunter, by Tana French. All of these titles are available within the Viking Library System~ reserve your copy today!
Would we
recommend this to a friend to read?
"MAYBE" (Equally split vote)
Would we
recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"NO"
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