If you are looking for non-stop action from page 1, this probably isn't the book for you. By the time I got to chapter 4 I found it very difficult to stop listening. I stuck with it, and very soon was completely immersed in the characters and the story. The first 30 minutes or so seemed a little 'talky' and slow.

However, by the end of the second episode I was 'hooked'. At first I wasn't sure if I liked them or not. Last year the local PBS affiliate broadcast several episodes based on this series. 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. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbors nervously lock their doors while a killer lives on in their midst.Īnn Cleeves is sure to dazzle US mystery listeners with this unforgettable series debut. 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. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man - loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is a cold January morning, and Shetland lies beneath a deep layer of snow. 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. When this person is tracked down it leads the police to the actual culprit.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. It transpires that Catherine was filming interviews with local residents for her project and the discovery of her phone shows an argument with her apparent killer. The other woman turns out to be Sally's austere mother Margaret, the teacher, and she admits that Catriona saw her with her lover before running off.

Catriona's brother arrives on the island and tells Perez that when they were children their father was having an affair. DI Perez believes he and his team are finally closing in on the killer as they discover what 17-year-old Catherine Ross was hiding from everyone in the hours before her death.įollowing the discovery of Catriona's body holding his sister's doll, Magnus is taken into custody though it is clear he did not murder Catherine whilst Catriona's death is shown to have been an accident.

Raven black ann cleeves summary