Raven Black

I loved visiting the Shetland isles with world-weary police inspector Jimmy Perez. The islands, the unique culture, weather, and the remoteness were such compelling components of the story. I loved how Ms. Cleeves used Scotland as one of her characters. She created this lush and detailed world that’s eerie and uncomfortable, the perfect setting for a murder mystery.

I’m also a sucker for a grumpy detective, and Jimmy Perez is such an understandably jaded character, but he still has a kind, warm heart under his crusty exterior that comes out when he’s interacting with his more novice colleagues and members… show more.

Ann Cleeves is the author whose writing I feel most closely resembles a modern mystery whodunnit. The story opens and a crime is revealed, and I was immediately pulled into Shetland. Drawn into the atmosphere of the island and the lives of the locals. In Raven Black, readers are challenged to not only uncover the motive of the crime, but they are faced with the reality of prejudices and how they can point the finger of guilt unjustly. A quiet island, once comfortable in their community, suddenly is set uneasy when they realize that a killer is living among… show more.

Ann Cleeves is a British mystery writer with three-plus long-running series. My favorite, including Raven Black, features emotionally wounded but fiercely dedicated Shetland detective Jimmy Perez. Cleeves is by no means a cozy culinary writer, but she’s a master of showing characters through their relationship to food. How can a reader resist lines such as, “Mr. Scott was a pale, thin man. A stick of forced rhubarb said Sally’s mother, who had seen him at a parents meeting” or “She tried to imagine Mr. Ross, sitting at their kitchen table while her mother hacked at the overcooked… show more.

On the Shetland Islands, off the northeast coast of Scotland, winter casts an iron-clad hold on both land and people. When dawn breaks on New Year’s Day, the body of a young girl is spotted on the frozen beach, ravens circling in the lowering sky. A scapegoat soon presents itself in the shape of a lonely, mistrusted outcast, but Inspector Jimmy Perez refuses to take the easy way forward. As Jimmy’s search for the truth continues, clues and red herrings drift across the landscape like the gloomy ravens of the title and more than one dark secret waits to… show more.