Raven Black

Catherine Ross moved to the Shetland Islands shortly after her mother’s death. Worldly wise and aloof, she is left to roam freely by her grief stricken father. She observes the islanders through the lens of her camera. On New Year’s Eve she travels home with a local girl her own age, Sally Henry, a shy, self-conscious girl who also feels like an outsider in at school. On a dare they decide to stop in and see Magnus Tait . Magnus is a simple man who has no friends . Half the town is convinced that he is guilty of an unsolved child murder from years ago. Shortly after visiting Magnus, Catherine turns up dead. Local police detective and Shetland Islander, Jimmy Perez isn't convinced.

This is a very engrossing, character-driven mystery. show more The characters are striking, complex individuals. The plotting is strong and instead of following the story from a single perspective, the author reels out the story in a multi-stranded narrative. Despite being a murder mystery, this book is about the ordinary. It's the kind of mystery that, once you've finished it, you'll want to read again. It's the first book in the original Shetland Island Quartet which has now expanded to six books. show less

raven-blackWhen it was first published, ten years ago, "Raven Black" was an award-winning book that was seen as breaking new ground in crime fiction by virtue of evoking the atmosphere of the (almost crime-free) Shetlands and creating a more-than-typically reflective, low key but passionate, main character in the form of Fair Isle born Jimmy Perez.

Since then, it's spawned another six books (the most recent of which, "Cold Earth" was published last month), and a TV series that is on its second season.

It seemed to me that I was probably missing something, so I decided to take a look.

"Raven Black" tells the story of the investigation of the murder of teenage girl who is found in the snow on the Shetland hills, not far from her home, show more apparently strangled with her own long red scarf.

What I liked most about the book was Ann Cleaves ability to write from the point of view of multiple characters in the story. This means that, although Jimmy Perez is the actor who moves the puzzle-solving part of the plot along, his is not the only, or even the main, perspective we get. We see the world through the confused and often frightened eyes of an old man who has been ostracised by the rest of the Islanders and is seen as the natural prime suspect for the murder; through the artistic eyes of a young mother, trying to raise her daughter alone after a divorce and seeking solace, safety and artistic inspiration in the beauty of the island; through the eyes of the murdered girl's best friend, who has no friends, is disconnected from her parents and is infatuated with the local rich bad-boy.

Jimmy Perez is a rare thing in fiction, a detective who doesn't let his ego get in the way of his job and who listens carefully to everyone who talks to him.

"Raven Black" lives up to its subtitle as "A Thriller". I wanted to know what was going to happen next and I was kept guessing right to the very end of the novel.

It was an entertaining read that has "make me into television" punched through like the words in a stick of Brighton rock but it was perhaps a little under-written in terms of capturing the scenery of the Shetlands and the feel of the big winter festival. I needed a little more to move me on from "what an intriguing puzzle" to "what a strange place and what interesting people".

Still, there was more than enough there to raise "Raven Black" about the average and I will be back for the next in the series. show less

There are two facts I must convey to you before reviewing the book. One: I am extremely uncomfortable, to the point of pain, around people with cognitive and/or communicative disorders or inabilities. Two: I was the object of my pedophile mother's sexual interest until I was fifteen.

Unsurprisingly, these aren't the sorts of themes I find enjoyable to find in my leisure reading. "Raven Black" has both! I was thinking seriously of abandoning the read, just quietly taking the book back to the library and forgetting it existed. Cleeves managed to make that an undesirable option, and in doing so, made it possible for me to hold a very unflattering mirror up to my character.

The younger of my two grandsons is autistic. It is extremely hard for show more his mother to cope with the demands of two active, intelligent, communicative children plus an active, intelligent, uncommunicative one. I don't know how she does it. I would be incapable of doing one-third what she does, with (at long last) support and help from her (second) husband.

Magnus Tait, one of our POV characters, is cognitively impaired. It was *horrible* for me to read the sections of text told from his POV because I could not bear to be in this close contact with him. It made me think of the helpless inability I feel when confronted with my autistic grandson...that sense of having nothing of myself to offer, of withdrawal from avoidable contact...no one can tell me the boy isn't aware of it, and while Magnus isn't autistic, it was a close-enough situation, and to know from the inside what chill and distance feels like...well, how awful, how awful to know it, feel it, and be unable to *understand* it.

At least I understand. But funnily enough, that fails to make it better. It makes it worse.

Pedophilia is present in several characters, no spoilers so no names, and the object of desire's POV is used in the story as well. It's unbelieveable to me that Cleeves can recreate the unmixed-but-unsettled feelings of a child who holds that kind of intoxicating, terrifying, inappropriate power over an adult. I hope not, for her sake, but I felt "takes one to know one" so many times in reading certain parts of the book.

The thriller aspects of the book were nicely done, though as an old hand I pegged the murderer and motive fairly early on...but, discomfitingly, I found that I wanted the truth not to be what I knew, but what my prejudices drooled over.

I recommend this book to the unsqueamish. It's strong stuff. Nothing that happens in it is gratuitous. The guilty, and I mean those morally guilty, are punished severely. There is a bleak pleasure in that. show less

This is a detective tale that makes good use of its setting, Shetland is as much a character as a location. It starts with Fran Hunter finding a girl's body. Catherine Ross lived in the same house as Catriona Bruce, who went missing some decade ago, was never found and the case never solved. The locals have their eye on Magnus Tait, an old man who lives alone and who is a little slow at times. He was questioned about Catriona and is now questioned about Catherine. There are lots of strands in here, with the relationships between some of the key protagonists reflecting the small town nature of the community, there's not a lot you an do without someone knowing about it. It's atmospheric and keeps you reading to the end.
I'd read her first show more novel, A Bird in the Hand, this is a lot tighter. show less

This is the first in Cleeves' Shetland series, and it was terrific. More about the actors in the mystery than about the lead detective, Jimmy Perez, although he has loads of potential to be interesting. A teenaged girl is discovered dead in the snow, strangled with her own scarf, but "unmolested". The community's suspicion immediately falls upon old Magnus Tait, who was questioned years ago about the unsolved disappearance of a much younger girl, but never charged. Aha! He's done it again...won't get away with it this time, though, will he? Unless, maybe... The keenest reader won't be absolutely sure 'til all is revealed, but I had my own suspicions, and I was right in the end. That happens so rarely that it warrants a whole extra star show more for this one. show less

As in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series (Botswana) and Andrea Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano series (Sicily), the location — in this Icase, Shetland — ends up as much a character as any of the people in Ann Cleeves’ Raven Black. Beset by forbidding cold and insular inhabitants, Shetland and its isolation plays a big role in this offbeat thriller.

Jimmy Perez can trace his ancestry on Fair Isle (one of the Shetland Islands) back centuries to a wayward sailor from the Spanish Armada who ended up in Scotland. Perez, a policeman on the main island of Shetland, has not recovered from a divorce and the miscarriage that led to it many years before. He’s no superhero copper, but he knows Shetland and show more knows how to talk to people — and get them to talk to him. I liked him enough to commit to the series after having read the debut novel, Raven Black.

As others have written, the ending took me completely by surprise, although that wasn’t the first twist in the novel. Cleeves takes her time introducing us to Shetland and her characters, but the pace never seems slow. (The comparisons to Peter Robinson and his leisurely Alan Banks series are spot on.) So here’s to a long and beautiful friendship with Perez and Shetland. show less

I really loved the first book in the "Shetland Island" series. I think the main character of Jimmy Perez is so different (in a good way) from Vera that I want to continue and finish up this series this year if I can. I think what hit me (in another good way) was that the residents of this community feel a bit out of sync with the real world. Jimmy is at a crossroads a bit in this book (leave policing and return back home to his family) but the murder ends up changing things for him and the community. I loved that the second book shows how this murder and the case changed things for not just Jimmy, but for others. I loved the mystery and the reveal behind a decade long murder and this recent one were surprising. There were clues there, show more but I didn't read them as significant until after the fact. Solid start by Ann Cleeves.

"Raven Black" starts on the New Year. Two young girls knock on the door of local pariah and eccentric Magnus Tait. Magnus is so happy to ring in the New Year with the young woman he has watched from afar for a while. He finds himself focusing on one of them, Catherine, who reminds him of a young girl named Catriona who went missing years earlier. When Catherine is found murdered, the local police think that Magnus has done it, but local DI Jimmy Perez doesn't think he has. And when DI Roy Taylor, head of a special team from Inverness, Scotland arrives, he finds himself agreeing with Perez. The book follows Perez as he gets to the bottom of who killed Catherine and why.

I really liked Perez a lot. I think because he's careful about what he says, does, and doesn't go around and just stomp all over others (Vera) and treats his staff like trash (Vera again). I loved reading about him struggling with returning home or not, and his regrets over his first marriage and loss of a child. But you can see that Shetland has gotten into his bones and how much he loves the place and people. He systematically goes through things and realizes that something is not adding up with Catherine's murder and the long ago missing case of Catriona.

The other characters in this one like Fran were great too I thought. I was intrigued by her and felt at times sorry for her. Finding out why she left her first marriage and her dealing with the effect of finding Catherine's body has her not quite knowing what to do. I thought the development of this character in the second book in the series was great honestly.

The writing is lyrical at times. I found myself wanting to go to this place and look at the sky. Cleeves is a great one for writing about the land and making it a character in itself.

The ending was very well done. I honestly didn't see the reveals coming on the one murderer at all. The second one I had thoughts about because at times things seemed off, but the why behind it I thought was pretty sad. show less