The Healers

Ann Cleeves Classic Crime - engaging mysteries to savour, beloved characters to meet again
The Healers is the fifth mystery novel in the Inspector Ramsay series by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series.
Isolated farmer Ernie Bowles was found lying on his kitchen floor, gruesomely strangled . . .
News of the murder came to Inspector Stephen Ramsay early on Monday morning and he fears this case will not be simple. In his experience, most murders are straightforward: an explosion of family pressure, the loss of control in a fight. But Bowles seems to have kept himself to himself and had lived alone since his mother's death. A seemingly unconnected women is then found strangled too, surely two such killings in the same locality are more than just chilling coincidence?
When Ramsay hears of a third suspicious death, a very tenuous link between the victims takes on a new importance, for all were connected in some way to the Alternative Therapy Centre in Mittingford. Could one of the healers be a killer?

Ann Cleeves is the author of more than thirty-five critically acclaimed novels, and in 2017 was awarded the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger. She is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn, who can be found on television in ITV's Vera, BBC One's Shetland and ITV's The Long Call respectively. The TV series and the books they are based on have become international sensations, capturing the minds of millions worldwide.
Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of 'Murder Squad', working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. Ann also spends her time supporting access to books and advocating for reading to improve health and wellbeing. In 2021 her Reading for Wellbeing project launched with local authorities across the North East. She lives in Northumberland where the Vera books are set.