Blue lightning by Ann Cleeves

Thank you to Ann Cleeves website for this review.



Detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to Fair Isle to introduce his fiancée, Fran, to his parents. It's a community where everyone knows each other, and strangers, while welcomed, are still viewed with a degree of mistrust.

Challenging to live on at the best of times, with the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped, tension is high and tempers become frayed.

Enough to drive someone to murder...
When a woman's body is discovered at the renowned Fair Isle bird observatory, with feathers threaded through her hair, the islanders react with fear and anger. With no support from the mainland and only Fran to help him, Jimmy has to investigate the old-fashioned way. He soon realises that this is no crime of passion - but a murder of cold and calculated intention.
With no way off the island until the storms abate, Jimmy knows he has to work quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the opportunity to strike again.
Andrew Taylor, writing in the Spectator, said: "As usual, the plotting is strong and the background fascinating. Cleeves is particularly good at assembling domestic detail that adds a cumulative poignancy and depth to her characters' lives. The narrative builds to a truly shocking climax with a grimly convincing epilogue."
Award-winning crime writer Frances Fyfield said: "This is a real, page turning thriller. It is beautifully crafted, belonging to the golden age of well-fashioned detective fiction. Clues, red herrings, isolation, birds, wings, feathers, unusual passions made understood. I simply could not put it down... a terrific, atmospheric novel."


Blue Lightning was chosen by John Lanchester as one of his (two) books of the year in the Telegraph Review (20.11.2010).
Antonia Fraser, writing in The Lady, was hooked: and having read Blue Lightning went on to read the rest of the quartet - but she recommends reading them in chronological order!

If you are looking for a well-crafted Agatha Christie-type murder mystery with a strong atmosphere, you cannot do better than turn to Ann Cleeves.

Antonia Fraser, The Lady

White nights by Ann Cleeves

It's midsummer in Shetland, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets.
Artist Bella Sinclair throws a party to launch an exhibition of her work and to introduce the paintings of Fran Hunter. The Herring House, the gallery where the exhibition is held, is on the beach at Biddista, in the remote north west of the island. When a mysterious Englishman bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where he's come from, the evening ends in farce. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter in a boathouse on the jetty, a clown's mask on his face.
Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that this is a local murder. A second murder Biddista only reinforces this belief. But the detective's relationship with Fran Hunter clouds his judgement. And this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.


White Nights was the Saturday Play on Radio 4 on Saturday 2nd July, 2.30 pm, directed by Kirsteen Cameron. and starring Steven Robertson as Jimmy Perez. Ann was particularly pleased with this casting: "This is great news" she said, "because Steven is a Shetlander." The play received a seasonal repeat on the evening of 9th June 2012.

The production also featured music by Shetland fiddler Chris Stout, who collaborated with harpist Catriona McKay to produce a CD aslso called - "White Nights"! Ann Cleeves explains: "It's not a representation of the book, rather a sense of Shetland and Scandanavia in mid-summer. But there is one tune called Roddy Sinclair - the name of a charismatic fiddle player who appears in the book!"
More about White Nights, the album, on Chris Stout's web site.
Find the locations described in White Nights on a map of Shetland, or read a review of White Nights in the Wheredunnit blog, with a focus on the scenes of the crime.
A short video of Ann Cleeves talking about White Nights.


Thanks to Ann Cleeve's website,  www.anncleeves.com

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

Red Bones, the third instalment of Ann Cleeves' Shetland Quartet, is set in spring: a time of rebirth and celebration. And a time of death... for April is the cruelest month.

Perhaps that's why Red Bones was chosen as the basis for Shetland, a new two-part crime drama set in Scotland and starring Douglas Henshall. A special Shetland preview on November 21st was well received by the local audience, and Ann Cleeves gave it her approval too: "It's great," she said. "It's not faithful to the book but it's faithful to the atmosphere and spirit of the book. It's important that it's a good piece of TV rather than stick rigidly to the book." The transmission date has not yet been announced, but is expected to be some time in January.

When a young archaeologist discovers a set of human remains, the island community is intrigued. Is it an ancient find - or a more contemporary mystery? Then an elderly woman is shot on her land in a tragic accident, and Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson, his own colleague Sandy Wilson. He finds two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness has divided the surrounding community.

With Fran in London, and surrounded by people he doesn't know and a community he has no links with, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then another woman dies, and as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, the two deaths remain shrouded in mystery.

Red Bones was long-listed for the Impac Dublin Award.

 

"Cleeves pulls out all the stops in this terrific tale."

The Globe and Mail

"...this intelligent mystery..."

The Sunday Times

"Cunning character play and deception play their part in this satisfying tale, bringing about a denouement that turns everything in the plot neatly and bewilderingly on its head."

Gerald Kaufman, The Scotsman

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Telling tales (2000 ) by Ann Cleeves

 

10 years ago Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of 15-year old Abigail Mantel. Now new evidence has proved Jeanie's innocence. But Jeanie commits suicide in her prison cell, unable to face the people who had believed her capable of killing a child. On hearing the news, Emma Bennett is haunted once more by memories of her vibrant best friend, Abigail, and by the thought that her killer is still at large. Now Inspector Vera Stanhope is making fresh enquiries amongst the residents of Elvet, the small East Yorkshire village where Emma and Abigail grew up. Everyone is feeling vulnerable and uneasy, even guilty. And when a second body is found, the investigation takes a frightening new turn...

"A riveting read. Ann Cleeves probes beneath the surface of a community to reveal the darkness that can fester when everyone thinks they know each other's secrets" by Val McDermid

"Cleeves' portrayal of rural life is as far removed from chocolate box as you could hope for. The natural world here is all-powerful, striking rather than pretty and relationships in the community as bitter as the winds that scour the coast. Whether detailing the domestic world, life with a small baby or the work of the pilots on the ships, Cleeves has an accomplished eye. An excellent psychological thriller." by Cath Staincliffe, Tangled Web

Thanks to AnnCleeves.com, the author's website

Silent Voices (2011) by Anne Cleeves

I am delighted to have discovered Ann Cleeves. Her characters are realistic, stories well crafted, and the language unpretentious.

When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals ligature marks around the victim's throat - death is never that simple.

Doing what she does best, Vera pulls her team together and sets them interviewing staff and those connected to the victim, while she and colleague, Sergeant Joe Ashworth, work to find a motive. While Joe struggles to reconcile his home life with the demands made on him by the job, Vera revels being back in charge of an investigation again. Death has never made her feel so alive.
And when they discover that the victim had worked in social services, and had been involved in a shocking case involving a young child, then it appears obvious that the two are somehow connected. Though things are never as they seem... (thanks to Ann Cleeves website)



Death of an expert witness (1977) by P.D. James

Death of an Expert Witness is an Adam Dalgliesh novel by P. D. James, published in 1977. It beginswith the discovery of a murder of young girl. However, this is not the focus of the novel, but rather is used as a method to introduce the reader to the staff of aforensic laboratory, the background of this mystery. The actual murder of Dr. Lorrimer, an experienced expert witness, is only discovered in the second section of the book. It is quickly established that only people associated with the lab would have the opportunity or the knowledge to commit the crime, which allows the detectives to focus their attention.

Synopsis by Wikipedia.org

I found the writing to be very pretentious.  As a long time PD James fan, I am glad that I read this book now even though it had been published almost 30 years ago.  The plot did not hang together as tightly as in most of James' novels. At times, the long complicated narratives became boring.  The characters did not seem to be fully developed, especially Inspector Dalgliesh.

100-year-old- man who climbed out the window and disappeared (2009, 2012 English translation) by Jonas Jonasson

Publishers Weekly Barnes and Noble  Agent: Anna Soler-Pont, Pontas Literary

Jonasson’s laugh-out-loud debut (a bestseller in Europe) reaches the U.S. three years after its Swedish publication, in Bradbury’s pitch-perfect translation. The intricately plotted saga of Allan Karlsson begins when he escapes his retirement home on his 100th birthday by climbing out his bedroom window. After stealing a young punk’s money-filled suitcase, he embarks on a wild adventure, and through a combination of wits, luck, and circumstance, ends up on the lam from both a small time criminal syndicate and the police. Jonasson moves deftly through Karlsson’s life—from present to past and back again—recounting the fugitive centenarian’s career as a demolitions expert and the myriad critical junctures of history, including the Spanish Civil War and the Manhattan Project, wherein Karlsson found himself an unwitting (and often influential) participant. Historical figures like Mao’s third wife, Vice President Truman, and Stalin appear, to great comic effect. Other characters—most notably Albert Einstein’s hapless half-brother—are cleverly spun into the raucous yarn, and all help drive this gentle lampoon of procedurals and thrillers.

To everything there is a season (2004) by Alistair MacLeod

The story is simple, seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. As an adult he remembers the way things were back home on the farm on the west coast of Cape Breton. The time was the 1940s, but the hens and the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the horse made it seem ancient. The family of six children excitedly waits for Christmas and two-year-old Kenneth, who liked Halloween a lot, asks, “Who are you going to dress up as at Christmas? I think I’ll be a snowman.” They wait especially for their oldest brother, Neil, working on “the Lake boats” in Ontario, who sends intriguing packages of “clothes” back for Christmas. On Christmas Eve he arrives, to the delight of his young siblings, and shoes the horse before taking them by sleigh through the woods to the nearby church. The adults, including the narrator for the first time, sit up late to play the gift-wrapping role of Santa Claus.

The story is simple, short and sweet, but with a foretaste of sorrow. Not a word is out of place. Matching and enhancingthe text are black and white illustrations by Peter Rankin, making this book a perfect little gift.

For readers from nine to ninety-nine, our classic Christmas story by one of our greatest writers. 

Thanks to GoodReads for summary. Dec 2014