The Moth Catcher
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4.4 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Moth Catcher is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera.
As though to a flame, they were drawn to their deaths . . .
Life seems perfect in Valley Farm, a quiet community in Northumberland. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist named Patrick, to look after the place while they’re away. But Patrick is found dead by the side of the lane into the valley – a beautiful, lonely place to die.
DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene and when searching the attic of the big house – where Patrick had a flat – she finds the body of a second man. The only thing connecting the two victims is a fascination with studying moths – and catching these beautiful, rare creatures.
Those who live in the close-knit Valley Farm development have secrets too, and as Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be deadly secrets trapped there . . .
Enjoy more of Vera Stanhope’s investigations with The Seagull and The Darkest Evening.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In British author Cleeves's atmospheric and well-wrought seventh mystery featuring Det. Insp. Vera Stanhope (after 2015's Harbour Street), 25-year-old graduate student Patrick Randle has come from London to house-sit for a grand family in the gentle Northumberland community of Valley Farm, but shortly into his stay, he's found dead by the roadside. Vera later discovers the body of a middle-aged man in Patrick's room; the two turn out to be connected only through enthusiasm for Lepidoptera. Suspicion falls on an unlikely group, the town's clique of couples enjoying early retirement. Cleeves expertly draws Vere's complex relations with her fellow detectives as well as the hidden springs of tension in the circle affected by the crime, touching on class relations, the ennui of middle age, and the deceits, frailties, and tenderness of long marriage. Though the book's deliberate pace may lose pure thrill seekers, patient readers will be rewarded as dread builds and old secrets surface.
