Ann Cleeves

The third book in the Shetland series could be subtitled, “In which Jimmy Perez hits his stride.” For the first time, he is leading an investigation without the help of a more senior officer from the mainland. Perez is much more confident in his own abilities, and persistent in the face of pressure to treat one death as an accident and another as suicide. The first death is Mima, grandmother of Perez’s staff member Sandy, who up to now has been fairly ineffective in his role. But with show more a vested interest in the case and support from Perez, Sandy steps up and takes on more responsibility.

The mystery includes a healthy dose of history through an archaeological dig looking for evidence of the Hanseatic League, a medieval commercial network. Among their finds are modern bones that may be related to the Shetland Bus, a clandestine organization supporting Norwegian resistance against Nazi occupation. It’s hard to imagine how any of this is connected to either of the two deaths, and the public prosecutor pressures Perez to close both cases. But together Perez and Sandy find the connections and ensure justice is served.

This is the Jimmy Perez I loved in the TV series, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the books. show less

Rating: 4 very very disgruntled stars of five

The Publisher Says: In the fourth book of Ann Cleeves’ critically acclaimed series set in the Shetland Islands, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez brings his fiancée home to Fair Isle, a birder’s paradise, where strangers are viewed with suspicions and distrust. When a woman's body is discovered at the island’s bird observatory, the investigation is hampered by a raging storm that renders the island totally isolated. Jimmy has to find clues show more the old-fashioned way, and he has to do it quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the chance to strike again.

My Review: Jimmy and Fran go to visit Jimmy's parents, Big James and Mary, on Fair Isle, since they're planning to be married. Big James and Mary make a nice engagement party for the happy couple at the North Light, which now serves as the centerpiece of a birding reserve and research center. Maurice and Angela, who run the reserve, have attracted the best chef *ever* in the form of Jane, a lesbian escapee from life's more hectic and less forgiving pace in London. Throw in some birders, a weird subspecies of Homo obsessivus, a misery of a teenaged daughter, a snotty young upperclass Brit-twit, and some genuinely surprising revelations about the families and lives of the characters we who are fans have come to love, and then...drumroll please...kill off an extremely main character for absolutely avoidable reasons and throw the entire cast of characters into a major tumult, and you have book four of the Shetland Islands Quartet.

Oh, owww. I thought Lousy Louise Penny had hurt me as badly as a novelist could with her perfidious, horrible, and completely unforgiven emotional drubbing in book 5 of Three Pines. I suppose I should have been on the alert for a similar anguishing event because Lousy Louise herself blurbed this book. I was, however, all padded up in cotton wool, interestedly following Jimmy around his hometown Fair Isle, meeting and tutting over the characters who are slated to die; I had my murderer all picked out (I was right) and I was practically *drooling* with eagerness to see my candidate suffer, be blamed, pay for a horrible crime, a forgivable one too though honestly had the first murder gone unpunished I wouldn't've been even a little fussed about it; and then *BLAMMO* right between the eyes, *smash* went the skull with a twist I did NOT see coming; and then, and then...! Cleeves kicked me square in the teeth with the ending!!

I cried. I was very upset. I felt I'd been hurt in my real life. It takes a good, good storyteller to make that happen.

These are well-written books, and they convey a clear sense of life in the Shetland Islands. They're very much worth reading on that basis alone. But Cleeves creates characters that are deeply real, ones you can invest in, and that's the most important quality a writer can have. I strongly recommend the books. This one, obviously, should be saved for last; I suspect, though, given the last few lines of the book, that Cleeves's publishers have prevailed upon her to make the Quartet more open-ended. I am not at all sure I think that's a good thing, if it's true. Still, I hope you will go and procure them for your reading pleasure, because it will be a pleasure.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

Inspector Jen Rafferty is approached at a party by a man who wished to talk to her about something that was clearly bothering her. Unfortunately, Jen had been clearly imbibing a bit too much and so he left without revealing what it was he wished to say. The next morning, the man is found dead at his daughter’s apartment in an artists’ colony. Detective Inspector Matthew Venn and his team are called in to investigate and, as they dig deeper into the man’s recent actions, it leads them show more to an online suicide group that may be, not only helping people deal with suicidal thoughts but actively encouraging them to kill themselves.

The Heron’s Cry is the second book in author Ann Cleeves’ Two Rivers series and it makes for a very compelling and, dare I say, brilliant, read. There are plenty of possible suspects as well as red herrings and twists and turns to keep the reader engaged.

But it is the main characters who are well-drawn and complex as well as likeable that keep the story moving as well as Cllevees’ empathetic treatment of suicide and its aftermath that makes this one of the best mysteries I have read so far this year. A definite high recommendation from me.

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

The final novel in the Shetland series concerns the death of Emma Shearer, who spent the past 8 years working as a nanny for a local doctor’s family. The circumstances clearly point to murder, so Jimmy Perez calls in Willow Reaves as Senior Investigative Officer. When Willow arrives, she drops a bombshell on Jimmy and it doesn’t go well. But they’re professionals, so they focus on solving the case despite the visible tension between them. Ann Cleeves skillfully introduces a number of show more characters who knew Emma and a couple of seemingly obvious suspects emerge, but are quickly ruled out. So who is the not-so-obvious killer? I was kept in suspense until the very end, and meanwhile I really enjoyed developments in the lives of Jimmy, Willow, and constable Sandy Wilson, which brought the series to a satisfying conclusion. At the time of publication in 2018, this would have seemed like the end of Jimmy Perez’s story but a new novel is coming in September 2025, set in Orkney: The Killing Stones. I can’t wait. show less