The CWA Diamond Dagger and Ann Cleeves

Today the Crime Writers' Association has announced that the winner of this year's CWA Diamond Dagger is Ann Cleeves. This news gives me special pleasure for two reasons. First, now that I'm the Chair of the CWA, I shall be the person to present Ann with the Dagger at the CWA Daggers awards dinner in London in late October. Second, she just happens to be (and it is a coincidence, I can assure you) one of my oldest friends in the crime writing world.

I first came across Ann's work before I met her. It was when I was battling away with my own first novel. I was interested to read her first book, not only because I'm a lifelong fan of detective stories, but also because it seemed to me to be a good idea to study the market, and what new writers of a roughly similar age to me were up to. In the same spirit, I was reading the first Peter Robinson novel at around that time. I enjoyed their books, and reviewed them. I even wrote an article discussing their evocation of rural landscape, with the title "Up the Garden Path". But the magazine I sent it to turned it down...

Later I met Ann in person - via the CWA - and we became friends. We both joined up with Murder Squad when Margaret Murphy founded it, and this led to many shared events. The first photo below, taken by Zoe Sharp, shows the original Squad line-up, including the late Stuart Pawson. The second, taken in her back garden at Whitley Bay, shows her with her husband Tim and CWA Northern Chapter doyens Peter and Margaret Lewis. I read and reviewed The Crow Trap, then apparently a stand-alone novel, and I like to think I was one of the very first to spot the potential of Vera Stanhope as a character.

After many years of working quietly away, in recent times, Ann has found fame and fortune thanks to the televising of her series about Vera and about Shetland's Jimmy Perez. Her story is a happy one. Her career (because she was writing good books many years before she became widely-read; I vividly recall us discussing how modest an income one could manage to live on as a writer) is a good example of why one should never lose faith. Yet she's always remained a good friend to readers, writers and libraries. Part of the point of the CWA Diamond Dagger, in the view of the CWA committee, is that it recognises not only the sustained excellence of a person's body of work but also their overall contribution to the genre. Nobody can be in any doubt that Ann is a very worth winner indeed.

Vera: Hidden Depths - review

Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn as DI Vera Stanhope, kicked off this evening with an adaptation of Hidden Depths. It was an interesting choice of story, because the first Vera book Ann Cleeves wrote was The Crow Trap. However, my own feeling when it came out originally was that Hidden Depths was a very strong novel, with an especially gripping opening, and this may partly explain the choice. In any event, if you haven't read them yet, the books can be read out of sequence without any difficulty or major spoilers at all.

Brenda Blethyn makes a very likeable, if at times surprisingly emotional, Vera, and the cast included Murray Head - whom I think of more as a singer, but who was excellent in his role as a catalyst for crime - and Juliet Aubrey, who played his glamorous wife. The North East locations were terrific, as good in their way as the Oxford settings in Inspector Morse. The finale was a touch melodramatic, but that is the way with television dramas, and its setting, in a spooky ruined castle, was very atmospheric.

Having followed Ann's career for so long, it was a great pleasure for me to see her work on the telly at last, so I don't suppose I am the most objective judge, but suffice to say that I thought this was a really enjoyable programme.

The timing of the show is, I think, marvellous, in that we've had a bank holiday week-end, and there is a feelgood factor around in many quarters after the Royal Wedding. I've read that the BBC have ditched Zen because there are 'too many male TV detectives'. Silly reasoning, in my opinion, but at least Vera is an original and refreshing character, as well as (much less important, I think) a woman.

One final point. I've encouraged Ann to contribute some copies of the scripts and materials to the CWA archives. At some date in the future, I hope we will have a fascinating record of the genesis of what I confidently expect to be a long running and very successful series.

Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn

Vera, the new TV crime series starring Brenda Blethyn, which is based on a splendid series of books by Ann Cleeves, is coming to our screens in the UK very soon. The first episode will be shown on ITV at 8 pm on Sunday, 1 May. There are to be three more episodes in succeeding weeks, and assuming the ratings are good (and I'm sure they will be great, given the strength of the cast and the storylines), another series will follow at a later date.

I'm enormously pleased about this, because I have been enjoying Ann's books since her writing (and my book reviewing) began in the late 1980s. We met through the Crime Writers' Association a few years later, and have been friends ever since. She has written many very enjoyable books, but her career really took off after she won the CWA Gold Dagger for Raven Black.

Vera Stanhope first appeared in The Crow Trap, a novel which I read and reviewed at the time of its original publication. I felt at the time that she was a wonderful character who deserved a series of her own, and although I think I'm right in saying that Ann did not originally intend Vera to be a long-running series character, I'm sure the TV series will prove that, for once at any rate, I was ahead of the game!

Vera

Now, at last, the story can be told. I am delighted to share the news that the Vera Stanhope novels written by my good friend Ann Cleeves are to hit the television screens. Last weekend, I took Ann and Cilla Masters (also pictured, outside Christ Church College) on a walking tour around Oxford and Ann mentioned that the news was about to break, while swearing us to secrecy. But now the embargo has been lifted, and it’s really very exciting.

The equally good news is that Vera will be played by that splendid actor, the Oscar-nominated Brenda Blethyn.OBE, whose glittering CV includes films such as Pride and Prejudice. I first came across her in a very enjoyable comedy series called ‘Outside Edge’, which featured my favourite sport of cricket, and drew her to my attention as a performer of real talent. It’s no surprise to me that she’s gone on to enjoy such success, and I’m sure she’ll be good as Vera.

Vera first appeared in The Crow Trap, which was Ann’s first stand-alone and quite a departure from her previous work. Ann acknowledges today that the book was perhaps over-long, but when I read it, I was immediately impressed with the character of Vera, who is that rarest of creatures, a genuinely distinctive detective.

The first ‘Vera’ will be based on Ann’s novel Hidden Depths. Filming begins in October and I can’t wait to see the finished version. Ann is a fine writer who wrote splendid novels for many years before receiving the scale of acclaim that she deserves, and it’s great to see her achievements in the genre rewarded.

Bucking the Trend

There is great news on Ann Cleeves’ website diary, which is that the transformation of her Vera Stanhope books into a television series is progressing quite swiftly. A good scriptwriter is in place and Ann and her husband Tim have been given him a tour of Vera’s backyard in the North East (Ann also gave my family and me a flavour of this fascinating part of the world when we were up there last spring – it’s an area I hope to explore further this summer.)

I’m delighted about Ann’s success. Vera is a great character - I’d go so far as to say she’s one of the most interesting British cops to have appeared on the scene in the last ten years. When I read the book in which she first appeared, The Crow Trap (originally conceived, I think, as a stand-alone) I expressed the hope in a review that she would return. So she has, and to increasingly impressive effect. The success of Ann’s books set on Shetland (which also cry out to be televised) has caused some readers to overlook the Stanhope novels, but I can recommend them. The Crow Trap is a rather longer book than usual from this writer, and perhaps not as immediately arresting as, say, Raven Black, but it’s still a good place to start.

Not surprisingly, given her success, Ann expresses optimism in her diary about the current state of the publishing business. Given that I have a natural streak of pessimism, I’m not quite as upbeat, since the scale of the economic calamities that have befallen us – and the UK’s economy seems to me to be in a worse state than some others - appears so great that publishing (and libraries, too – I’m thinking of the massive cutback and closure plans in Wirral, where I used to live) will almost inevitably suffer, perhaps quite badly. But this is one prediction which I hope will be proved very wide of the mark.