Ann Cleeves

• Name — Ann Cleeves • Born — 24 October 1954 • Birthplace — Herefordshire, England • Genre — Crime • Awards — Duncan Lawrie Dagger 2006 • Children — 2

Cleeves was born in Herefordshire and brought up in north Devon where she attended Barnstaple Grammar School; she studied English at the University of Sussex, but dropped out and then took up various jobs, including cook at the Fair Isle bird observatory, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer, library outreach worker, and child care officer.

Cleeves's work was first optioned for television after producer Elaine Collins discovered a copy of one of the Vera novels, The Crow Trap, while searching for holiday reading in an Oxfam shop in north London where she lived. Collins was the books executive for ITV Studios, which was looking for a new female detective to fill its Sunday night drama slot. The Vera Stanhope novels have been dramatised as the TV detective series Vera beginning in 2011 with 14 series produced up until 2025. Cleeves has writing credits for Series 13, Episode 1, 'Fast Love' alongside Paul Matthew Thompson. She appeared in the special "Vera... Farewell Pet," which reflected and celebrated the 14 years of the show. Collins went on to buy the rights to multiple of Cleeves' stories, the Shetland novels for the BBC; and the Two Rivers novels as the TV series The Long Call. Some of the later episodes in the Vera and Shetland series were original scripts based on Cleeves's characters.

She lives in Whitley Bay, and she was widowed in December 2018. Her husband was Tim Cleeves, a birdwatcher whose interest in ornithology Ann came to share. She has two daughters.

• A Bird in the Hand (1986), • Come Death and High Water (1987), • Murder in Paradise (1988), • A Prey to Murder (1989), • Another Man's Poison (1992), • Sea Fever (1993), • The Mill on the Shore (1994), • High Island Blues (1996),

• A Lesson in Dying (1990), • Murder in My Backyard (1991), • A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (1992), • Killjoy (1993), • The Healers (1995), • The Baby Snatcher (1997),

These novels, except for The Glass Room, have been dramatized in the television series Vera on ITV, which stars Brenda Blethyn in the title role. The programme ran for 14 series from May 2011 until January 2025. • The Crow Trap (1999), • Telling Tales (2005), • Hidden Depths (2007), • Silent Voices (2011), • The Glass Room (2012), • Harbour Street (2014), • The Moth Catcher (2015), • The Seagull (2017), • The Darkest Evening (2020), • The Rising Tide (2022), • The Dark Wives (2024),

In 2013, Red Bones was dramatised by David Kane for BBC television as the first episode of the series Shetland, which stars Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez. Episodes broadcast in 2014 were based on Raven Black, Dead Water, and Blue Lightning. • The Four Seasons Quartet • Raven Black (2006); Gold Dagger Award • White Nights (2008), • Red Bones (2009), • Blue Lightning (2010), • The Four Elements Quartet • Dead Water (2013), • Thin Air (2014), • Cold Earth (2016), • Wild Fire (2018), • Shetland (2015); a Shetland Island series (non-fiction) travel tie-in preceding Too Good To Be True • Too Good To Be True (2016); a Shetland Island series novella following Shetland and preceding Cold Earth Further Novels • The Killing Stones (2025); Set in the Orkney Islands after the previous books

The first book is the adaptive basis for The Long Call ITV series starring Ben Aldridge as DI Matthew Venn. • The Long Call (2019), • The Heron's Cry (2021), • The Raging Storm (2023),

• The Sleeping and the Dead (2001), • Burial of Ghosts (2003), • Short stories • * "A Winter's Tale" (1992) * "The Harmless Pursuits of Archibald Stamp" (1995) * "Sad Girls" (2001) * "The Plater" (2001) * "A Rough Guide to Tanga" (2002) * "Games for Winter" (2003) * "Owl Wars" (2004) * "The Midwife's Assistant" (2005) * "Basic Skills" (2006) * "Going Back" (2007) * "The Soothmoothers" (2010) * "Beastly Pleasures" (2010) * "Hector's Other Woman" (2011) – (re-released as "The Woman on the Island" in 2022) * "Mud" (2011) * "The Habit of Silence" (2011) * "Drop Dead Gorgeous" (2012) * "The Harmless Pursuits of Archibald Stamp" (2013) * "Secrets of Soil" (2013) * "The Spinster" (2014) * "The Pirate" (2014) * "Stranded" (2014) * "The Writer-in-Residence" (2014) * "The Starlings" (2015) * "Dreaming of Rain and Peter Lovesey" (2016) * "The Queen of Mystery" (2017) * "The Return" (2017) * "Moses and the Locked Tent Mystery" (2018) * "Frozen" (2020) * "Written in Blood" (2020) * "Wild Swimming" (2021) * "The Girls on the Shore" (2022) * "The Woman on the Island" (2022) – (originally released as "Hector's Other Woman" in 2011)