Raven Black

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

I saw a few episodes of the television series, including the premier based on this book. Luckily, I didn’t remember how the show turned out.

This novel presents a clear example of how the book is almost always better than the movie. The author artfully weaves together the lives in the little town of Lerwick on the Shetland Isles. She captures the small town atmosphere where everyone knows everyone else’s business; and she does it without creating ridiculous caricatures. The main characters are beautifully done even if some of the supporting characters fall a bit flat.

A newcomer to Lerwick is found murdered not far from her home on an icy winter morning in January. The immediate suspect is an old man best described as show more developmentally disabled. Everyone in this close-knit community is certain he did it, just as they are certain he killed another, younger girl some eight years earlier.

Luckily for Magnus Tait, Inspector Jimmy Perez isn’t as sure as the lifetime residents of Lerwick. Perez is only too familiar with tiny communities and being an outsider, as he grew up on Fair Isle but boarded in Lerwick for high high school years. So, Perez and Senior Inspector Taylor from the mainland keep asking questions in spite of being handed the easy answer.

As they keep probing, a bizarre story of youth and anger and betrayal unfolds to — for me, at least — a surprise ending. I will be looking for the second Perez mystery set in the Shetland Islands and ither works by this author. 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 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

It's January and cold on Shetland and a layer of snow covers everything, except a bright splash of colour that attracts Fran Hunter's eye. It turns out to be a neighbour, with ravens feasting on her corpse. All eyes turn to a man suspected years ago of a murder, Magnus Tait, an old man who isn't all there. That's the easy solution to the murder, but it doesn't satisfy Jimmy Perez, a local despite his name, his ancestors having survived the Armada storms and settled. He's a police detective and the solution presented isn't the one that satisfies him and makes him feel that all the questions are answered, so he keeps poking at it.

The twists and turns of this one kept me guessing, I really enjoyed it and will be continuing following this show more series, I was encouraged to read it by a knitting podcast but I will be following it more for the mystery than the knitting. I also like the characters and look forward to see what happens to them over time. show less

Scanning the hundred+ reviews here, it's clear that the film versions of [[Ann Cleeves]]' books won her more attention but also somewhat spoiled the books for many of those folks. Like some of these readers, I came to Jimmy Perez and Shetland after watching the film series. But I found the book illuminating, giving Cleeves the time to pause and fill in some of the backstory and character of the islands absent in a visual depiction. The set-up for Jimmy's life is slightly different here, but the seeds of what shows up in the film series are here, and I enjoyed taking the time to get to know him and these people better, letting our relationship bloom naturally. Yes, I knew how the book would end, knew the killer's identity, but that show more didn't matter so much.

Maybe some of those readers who found the book fell short weren't really looking to expand their experience, only recreate it. And the folks who reviewed the book as boilerplate haven't read enough mystery fiction to notice this is very different than the rest - maybe for them boilerplate is a codeword for "not what I wanted."

Highly recommended.
5 bones!!!!! show less