Murder among the birds

Ann Cleeves is one of our more popular authors writing crime novels at this present time. I’ve read books from three of her series which you can find reviewed here, here and here.

A Bird in the Hand is the first novel of a fourth series, written some years ago. It features as its main characters a retired couple, George and Molly. George has had an important career in the civil service and Molly has worked with offenders so they are both well placed to have the experience and the connections to investigate crimes.

George is an avid bird watcher who travels around the country looking for rare visitors to these shores – this book was written before the Internet so there are ways that the “twitchers” keep in touch with each other and spread news of unusual sightings. Because there aren’t many people who can live this way or who want to the birdwatchers all know each other and have a history. The hobby is competitive and everyone wants to be the first to see a rare bird.

George is asked to look quietly into the death of a young birdwatcher. It seemed that he was very popular and that his death was an accident. Neither of these assumptions is true and George and Molly have to look into the lives of the birdwatchers as well as that of the victim to find the culprit – but the investigation is not without its dangers to the couple.

This is a perfectly good crime novel which opens up a whole world to those of us not involved in competitive birdwatching. It is a bit dated now but that’s no real problem. I did find that it doesn’t have the lightness of touch of the author’s more recent books and I certainly didn’t enjoy it as much as the stories about Jimmy Perez or Matthew Venn but it’s definitely worth a read. William Shaw’s book The Birdwatcher (see review here)also describes the same hobby but tells a very different story and is one of the best crime novels I have read in recent years.