A short story that is officially flagged as 9.5 in the Vera Stanhope series, this is another one of those serendipitous pickups from the BorrowBox catalogue when I was looking for a short story to fill in a bit of time.
Set up as the precursor to THE RISING TIDE, it introduces the reader to Holy Island (the site of the subsequent novel which is also an episode of the TV series I believe), and gives the author a chance to flesh out Vera's backstory. After a spur of the moment decision to visit the island, she's reminded of another time, years ago, that she and her father were here. And the mystery meeting he had with a woman on the beach which set her on the path that would eventually lead to her career as a detective.
Nicely done, it's a very short story at 32 pages, available mostly as an ebook from the looks of things, it was a perfect little filler, in what is now going to have to become a quest to go back and read the entire series, having watched the TV version avidly for many years now.
The Woman on the Island
A rare day off from policing leads DCI Vera Stanhope across the tidal causeway to Holy Island, the lure of crab sandwiches there too hard to resist.
While on the island, she is reminded of the day decades before when, as a teenager, she went with her father Hector on another day trip. The day she watched him meet with a mystery woman on the beach...
Vera already knew then that Hector kept secrets, but this time the fledging investigator was determined to find the truth of why he was meeting the woman on the island, never realizing it would mean taking her first step onto a path to becoming a detective...
In this wonderful short story, Ann Cleeves shows us the origins of Vera as a detective, and showcases the setting for her next novel, The Rising Tide.