Harbour Street By Ann Cleeves

Detective Joe Ashworth is on his way home with his daughter Jess when, due to very heavy snowfall, the Metro they are travelling on stops at Mardle, outside of Newcastle. The passengers  are asked to disembark and catch a bus. As the other passengers fade into the swirling snow, Jessie notices that an elderly woman hasn’t left the train. Thinking that the woman has fallen asleep, Jess approaches her to wake her up, only to find out that she has been fatally stabbed.  Nobody has witnessed the stabbing despite the train being very crowded.

Joe and his boss, Inspector Vera Stanhope, have to take the unhappy news about the victim, 70-year-old Margaret Krukowski, to Kate Dewar, who owns the Harbour Guest House in a dingy waterfront town at the end of the Metro line. Margaret had been living in the house long before Kate left behind her career as a singer to buy it, and the older woman stayed on as an employee and honorary grandmother to Kate’s two children. Margaret was a volunteer at a local shelter that helped disadvantaged women.

Then, just days later, a second woman is murdered. The second victim is a young prostitute Margaret had befriended. Vera knows that to find the key to this new killing she needs to unravel the secrets troubling Margaret so deeply before she died.

Vera and Joe try to narrow down the suspects: a traveling book salesman, a local owner of a charter boat, a biology professor doing research in the area and Kate’s lover. All of them seem to have secrets and are not entirely honest with the detectives. It is obvious to Vera and Joe that there are secrets in Harbour Street that no one wants revealed

This novel reminds me of an Agatha Christie novel with little gore.  And like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, the authoir Ann Cleeves keeps us wondering to the very end who the murderer might be. I was shocked when the killer was finally revealed.