The Glass Room

A Vera Stanhope Mystery

By: Ann Cleeves

Narrated by: Charlie Hardwick

From CWA Diamond Dagger Award winner Ann Cleeves comes The Glass Room, the fifth audiobook in the Vera Stanhope series. Published for the first time in the US.

“I do love Vera!” (Val McDermid, best-selling author)

“Ann Cleeves is one of my favorite mystery writers! I relish learning more about Vera with each book.” (Louise Penny, New York Times best-selling author of the Inspector Gamache series)

DI Vera Stanhope is not one to make friends easily, but her hippy neighbors keep her well supplied in homebrew and conversation, and somehow bonds have formed. When one of them goes missing, Vera tracks the young woman down to the Writer’s House, a country retreat where aspiring authors work on their stories.

Things get complicated when a body is discovered, and Vera’s neighbor is found with a knife in her hand. Calling in the team, Vera knows that she should hand the case over. She’s too close to the main suspect. But the investigation is too tempting, and she’s never been one to follow the rules. Somewhere there is a killer who has taken murder off the page and is making it real....

©2012 Ann Cleeves (P)2012 Soundings

Critic reviews

"Narrator Charlie Hardwick gleefully captures the grumpy personality, sharp tongue, and hidden heart of gold of Vera Stanhope... Hardwick's timing is impeccable for Vera's honest and self-deprecating humor.... A whodunit further elevated by an appealing and energetic narrator." (AudioFile)

Wonderful writer – wonderful narration

Excellent sense of place and characterization done with elegant economy of words. Complex plotting with multiple possibilities and psychological subtleties – – all of which was ultimately sufficiently intentionally confusing that I didn't see the ending as the obvious one and that might be the only flaw in this wonderful story by this wonderful writer- I didn't get a reader's satisfaction that I had solved it before the ending!

A Good Read

Love Vera Stanhope character and stories. You’ll get lost in the world oAnne Cleese’s builds.

Loved it, wonderful characters, and good old Vera

Loved it. In the style of Agatha Christie. Complex weaving of characters and Vera is such an interesting character!

Perfect narration for Vera mysteries!

Narrator's accent perfect for these mysteries. Her reading pace and inflection make for excellent storytelling.

Thoroghly enjoyable!

I really enjoyed both the story and the narrator. I only wish she had narrated the whole series.

A Decent Story

I do love ole Vera, anything and everything with her as the lead. I guess I found the focus on writers a little tedious (and Nina in particular is a remarkable bore, why must we spend so much time with her, it's like watching a goldfish) -- writers should never write fiction about writers in my opinion, it is too wink wink. Cleeves is no stylist either which is why I listen to these books (and watch them with the wonderful and perfectly cast Brenda Blethyn!) and the characters aside from Vera are never particularly interesting (though Joe does have some movement in this one), however I can never see the killer coming so the plotting is fairly ingenious. Good narrator too.

Great Book & Perplexing Mystery

What I loved about this book: in the tradition of Dorothy Sayers, deep deep characters and an atmosphere of evil and menace make for a compelling experience. Ann Cleeves proves an outstanding spell weaver.

Must Listen!

Narrator is exceptional.

Experiencing this book demonstrates why the show Vera is so good.
It is due to the magnificent writing as well as the superb acting. The novel deals with writers, academics and the business of publishing. This allows the author, Ann Cleeves, to make clever and insightful comments through her characters.

A Writer’s Stage for Murder

Murder mystery author, Ann Cleeves, stages murder at a writers’ clinic. As usual, she develops multiple characters, but as they are all writers, it is difficult to keep the characters separate in your mind. The plot is engaging with many red herrings and you won’t put the book down until you know “who done it”.

Crime Writers Witness a Murder

Death during a writers' conference. All the writers are suspects. Vera must enter a literary world she's not comfortable in. Her sergeant runs into an attraction he can't understand within himself, and Vera is much too close to the investigation because of her hippy neighbors.