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Summary
Summary
Long a celebrated crime writer in Britain, Ann Cleeves' fame went international when she won the coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger for this amazing suspense novel, Raven Black. Like Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse or Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks, Cleeves' new detective, Inspector Jimmy Perez, is a very private and perceptive man whose bailiwick is a remote hamlet in the Shetland Islands.
It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross.
The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man---loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when detective Jimmy Perez and his colleagues from the mainland insist on opening out the investigation, a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbors nervously lock their doors, while a killer lives on in their midst.
Ann Cleeves is sure to dazzle U.S. mystery readers with this unforgettable series debut. This series is the basis for the hit BBC show Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall, which attracted over 12 million viewers in its first two nights on the air.
Author Notes
Ann Cleeves was born in 1954 in England. She studied English at Sussex University. She then became a British crime-writer. In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger which is the richest crime-writing prize in the world, for her novel Raven Black. She also writes The Vera Stanhope novels which have been transformed into the TV detective series 'Vera'. Her Jimmy Perez novels are dramatozed as the TV series 'Shetland'.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in the remote Scottish Shetland Islands, Cleeves's taut, atmospheric thriller, the first in a new series, will keep readers guessing until the last page. Det. Insp. Jimmy Perez investigates the murder of teenage Catherine Ross, found strangled on a snowy hillside shortly after New Year's. While the police and citizens alike are quick to lay the blame on local eccentric Magnus Tait, who was not only the last person to see Catherine alive but also the prime suspect in the disappearance eight years earlier of another girl, Perez has his doubts. He's soon drawn into an intricate web of lies as he unearths the long-buried secrets of everyone from a roguish playboy to Catherine's only school friend. Cleeves, winner of the CWA's Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award (formerly the Gold Dagger), masterfully paints Perez as an empathetic hero and sprinkles the story with a lively cast of supporting characters who help bring the Shetlands alive. When the shocking identity of the murderer is revealed, readers will be as chilled as the harsh winds that batter the isolated islands. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
On the remote island of Shetland, teacher Fran Hunter is walking home when she spots a splash of red in the deep, white snowdrifts, with black ravens flying above. What a perfect picture it makes, she thinks. But on closer inspection, she finds that the perfect picture is the dead body of local teenager Catherine Ross, whose red scarf has been used to strangle her. Suspicion immediately falls on recluse Magnus Tait, who was accused--but never convicted--of kidnapping another girl eight years earlier. Policeman Jimmy Perez, assigned to the case, isn't convinced of Magnus' guilt. As he investigates, he uncovers a web of sinister secrets, strange superstitions, petty rivalries, thwarted love, and illicit affairs--the dark underbelly of Shetland's tight-knit community. Cleeves offers up a dark, brutal, suspenseful page-turner that will keep even seasoned mystery buffs guessing right up to the end. --Emily Melton Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHO knew that "Bangkok 8" and "Bangkok Tattoo" were just the warm-up acts? As vibrantly as those sizzling thrillers captured the exotic flavor of crime and corruption in Thailand's capital city, John Burdett's BANGKOK HAUNTS (Knopf, $24.95) opens up new avenues of awe. Even Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the urbane detective with the Royal Thai Police who narrates the bizarre stories in this series, is struck dumb by the sadistic snuff film that sets the latest gaudy plot in motion. "Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species," this devout Buddhist observes. "I am watching one right now." To add to his despair, the woman being strangled in the film is Damrong, a prostitute who was the love of his life when she worked in the Old Man's Club, the brothel Sonchai operates with his mother. Like others who succumbed to Damrong's charms, he's still in thrall to this fascinating creature, who returns in spirit as a sexually voracious wraith who will continue to haunt him if he doesn't bring her killer to justice - and do something about this new development in the city's notorious pornography industry. Daunting enough, the task is complicated by his cheerfully corrupt superior's eagerness to branch out from his methamphetamine business by getting into the porn racket. The ambiguous moral hemisphere Sonchai inhabits can be downright dizzying, but since he observes the rites and rituals of his native culture as conscientiously as he consults a professional colleague from the F.B.I., this selfdescribed half-caste is well positioned to negotiate all paths to enlightenment. Girding himself to outwit a vengeful ghost or a hired killer comes as naturally as offering good-luck lotus blossoms to the Buddha above the cash register at the family brothel. "You live in a magic-ravaged land," Sonchai's F.B.I, contact tells him. But the wonder of Burdett's hallucinatory brand of Southeast Asian magic - which puts his novels in range of the fabulous Yellowthread Street procedurals William Marshall set in Hong Kong and of Colin Cotterill's fanciful mysteries featuring the Laotian coroner-sleuth Dr. Siri Paiboun - is that this spooky stuff is manifested in a real world governed by what Sonchai calls "functional barbarism." The author, who practiced criminal law in Asia and clearly knows his territory, has a fine skill for distilling the morbid beauty (not to mention the grotesque humor) in scenes of everyday misery. But in the end, death-by-ghost still seems a step up from a real-life peasant existence in which children eat dirt and are occasionally stomped to death by elephants. Con Lehane's mysteries about a genial Irish-American bartender named Brian McNulty are as cruelly charming as those Irish saloon storytellers who make sure you're laughing before they flatten you with the sad stories of their lives. Running true to form, DEATH AT THE OLD HOTEL (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95) opens in the still-carefree days of the early 1990s at a hotel bar on Midtown Manhattan's far west side. It's December, and everyone's in a Christmas mood. But holiday spirits take a dive when the nasty manager unfairly fires a waitress and Brian, proud son of an old Commie organizer and a devoted union man, finds himself leading a strike. Goaded by his friend and fellow bartender, Barney Saunders, "a wild, young Irishman" of irresistible appeal, this big-hearted hero tries to prove a connection between the manager and a crooked union boss, and before you know it, two people are shot dead - and everyone on the picket line is a suspect. For all the sentimental trimmings he hangs on this tale, Lehane has an honest feel for the working-class life of New York. And he's clear-eyed about those crimes of the heart that have nothing to do with class. There are certain places on this earth so eerie in their austere beauty that they fairly demand to be used as the setting for a mystery. In RAVEN BLACK (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95), Ann Cleeves obliges with a chilling tale set in a remote Scottish village in the Shetland Islands. The murder plot is fairly straight-forward: a teenage girl is found strangled, and the killer, according to local rumor, is a crazy old man who lives alone and has long been suspected in the disappearance of another local girl. But before the police can make a case, yet another child disappears. On these bare bones, Cleeves drapes moody descriptions of the harsh climate conditions on "bare wastes of heather moorland," stark observations on the revolting instincts of birds of prey and suggestive profiles of characters who have lived too long in these lonely parts. Never mind the murders; her study of a forgotten soul waiting for someone to come to his door and wish him a happy new year is enough to freeze the blood. In THE BROKEN SHORE (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25), Peter Temple drops the clipped delivery that gives a hard edge to his popular Jack Irish mysteries and delivers a mature and measured account of the kind of crimes committed in the dead quiet of rural Australia. Joe Cashin, his Victoria Police homicide detective, is also a different breed of hero. Unlike Jack Irish, who is as tough as old boots, Cashin has been sensitized by a close call with death and is making a slow recovery in the coastal area where he grew up. But when two Aboriginal youths caught with goods belonging to a murdered white man are killed in a police shootout, Cashin can't ignore the region's virulent strains of racism. Along with giving us mournful scenes of civilization's slow encroachment on an idyllic countryside, Temple offers some provocative and painful views of Australia's inner landscape. John Burdett Even the urbane detective who narrates Burdetts Bangkok thrillers is appalled by the snuff film that sets his latest plot in motion.
Library Journal Review
In a remote Sheltland Islands hamlet, New Year's Eve rings in a dead body for Inspector Jimmy Perez in this 2006 Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award winner. Cleeves lives in Yorkshire, England. A Minotaur First Edition Selection. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.