Raging Storm

This book starts really solidly and I found that it pulled me in almost completely. I'm expanding more into the mystery/thriller genre specifically in order to find authors similar to John Grisham but with better representation for minority groups. With that in mind, I found that the prose was exactly what I was looking for; matter-of-fact and to the point, maybe a little disillusioned. Unfortunately, that's where my list of nice things to say gets significantly shorter.

This is the second installment in the Matthew Venn series. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of thrillers, barring psychological, that centre on the characters in this way - you're meant to be invested in their lives as well as their jobs. That said, nothing is helped by the fact that I didn't like the characters. Mild spoilers begin here.

Jen is the only character who I truly liked - and she had unfortunately few POV chapters. Her and Johnathan (Matthew's husband, who we don't get any POVs from) were genuinely interesting. Unfortunately, a lot of Jen's internal thoughts centred on her role as a mother, and her past relationship. She still contributed a lot to the narrative, but I found it to be a trend among the female characters that they were very prominently mothers - not mothers before characters, but not particularly far from it. Ross May came off as unpleasant and stuck-up even from his own POV, let alone from other people's (that may have been intentional, to be honest). Matthew Venn seemed...well-intentioned, but overall very sad and boring. Especially by the end, it really felt that he had a guilt complex, and it's great that there was some gay rep, but Venn never presented his marriage as...happy. I got a lot of self-pity from him throughout the book and it got very old very soon. Another major issue I had was that the supporting characters act like supporting characters from their own POVs, at least at the beginning.

The hopes I had for diversity also fell through entirely. It's possible I was holding Cleeves to a higher standard than was fair - obviously I had been assuming that surely, a woman must be a least a little better - but while Grisham does write like a white man in the 70's, he does acknowledge bigotry and has a decently wide range of characters - especially in his more recent series, like Camino. For something published in 2023, this book was unfortunately centred on white men, with some white women allowed onto the fringes. The most diversity was comprised of Johnathan and Matthew Venn (a marriage which seemed very sad and boring to be honest) and a disabled character mentioned for about one page. As typical, every member of the police force who wasn't a main character was overweight, unfit, or both. Major plot spoilers are in the last paragraph.

The plotlines that Cleeves set up were definitely absorbing - I was genuinely curious to see what happened. Venn's theory about Eleanor (maybe 70% of the way through) was unexpected, but made sense - it was a good twist. The actual twist itself was amazing and tied everything in together really well. It was a genuinely satisfactory turn of events. Using Ford that way was a great way to play on the audience's emotions - my first thought after shock was "this is going to kill Mary". However, having Eleanor monologue everything to the cops and having Venn monologue it to Jen and Ross was lazy writing. Everything came together believably, but even the discovery of interesting information is tempered by it not being "discovered" so much as "told". I also found that Eleanor's portrayal as the perpetrator had that "misogyny bleeding through the cracks" feeling that I'm not the biggest fan of. Oh, and misuse of a clinical term (narcissist) simply to describe someone who the audience is meant to dislike. Of course Eleanor is the "crazy bitch" trope, while Ford is the "misguided father" and Gregory is the "misguided parishioner". Really uninteresting.

The epilogue was, in my opinion, unnecessary and uninteresting. Mostly an opportunity for Venn to wallow in more self-pity. Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm missing the existing context of the series, and that I just am not absorbed enough in the characters to appreciate it. Either way, not a very satisfactory ending. At least it was short lol.