Ann Cleeves, Red Bones (2009)

My review number 200 is of the third Jimmy Perez story, set in Shetland.

After what seems to be a shooting accident, an old woman dies in Whalsay, a small island east of the mainland. Mima is the grandmother of Sandy Wilson, Jimmy Perez´ young subordinate so this case gives Sandy a chance to show what he can (or can´t) when Perez isn´t around to hold his hand.

Through the story we get to know Sandy´s family, Mima and her offspring, and the Clouston family who have been neighbours forever – but are they mainly friends or rivals?

The outsiders to the place are the archaeologists Hattie, the enthusiastic PhD-student who sees Whalsay as her new home, her lively assistant Sophie and their Professor Paul Berglund who is in charge of the dig next to Mima Wilson´s croft.

Red Bones is a fine police procedural, but it is so much more than that. It conveys a strong sense of the remote environment and the stubborn characters of our two main families, including a story which dates back to the Second World War, a past which casts its shadows and to some extent explains how the family members have turned out.

I bought the book myself.

Incidentally Bernadette, Reactions to Reading, has also posted a review of Red Bones today. Read and enjoy her thorough post.

Ann Cleeves, White Nights (2008)

This crime novel which takes place in Shetland is the second Jimmy Perez story.

Apparently the Finns run amuck because of their everlasting dark nights, the Shetlanders do because of their white summer nights.


“It´s the time of year,” he said. “The light nights. It makes us all go a little bit mad.”

During this ´simmer dim´ Jimmy Perez goes to the opening of an art exhibition in Biddista, a small village. The painters are the local celebrity Bella Sinclair and Perez´ newfound love, Fran Hunter who is a very promising artist.

An English guest breaks down over one of the paintings, and when questioned by Perez, he claims he suffers from amnesia. The next day a local farmer finds the Englishman hanging in his shed. Someone has killed him and tried rather inefficiently to make it look like a suicide.

The competitive Inspector Roy Taylor rushes to Shetland from Inverness, and he does his best to unveil the old back story behind the murder before Perez, but he is no match for the local man who is acquainted with everybody in Biddista beforehand and knows how to make them feel comfortable enough to share their secrets.

I liked the first in the series but enjoyed this one even more - though the solution seemed a bit improbable to me.

I bought the book myself, and here is my review of the first in the series, Raven Black.

C for Christie, Cleeves, Craig.

Jeg tror, forfatteren Agatha Christie taler for sig selv.
I think author Agatha Christie is known to all my visitors.


Men kender du også Ann Cleeves, forfatter til den herlige Vera Stanhope-serie, og Shetland-kvartetten?

But do you also know Ann Cleeves, author of the brilliant Vera Stanhope series and the Shetland Quartet?


Eller hvad med Elizabeth Spann Craig, amerikansk forfatter, som har skrevet hygge-krimien Pretty is as Pretty Dies?

Or what about American writer Elizabeth Spann Craig who writes the cozy Myrtle Clover series?

You can find Elizabeth´s great blog here.

Ann Cleeves, Raven Black (2006)

On the first pages of this book we meet Magnus who is sitting all alone in his kitchen right after midnight. It is New Year´s Eve, and he keeps the light on because someone might turn up after all.

Rather unexpectedly, two young girls knock on his door. They have been in Lerwick to celebrate Hogmanay. Old, slow Magnus enjoys their visit, and does not realize they only do it for a dare.

A few days later one of the girls, sixteen-year-old Cathrine Ross, is found dead after having been seen together with Magnus again. The case seems fairly simple to the locals as Magnus was also involved in the case of eleven-year-old Catriona who disappeared without a trace some years ago. She had made a habit of visiting Magnus and his old mother.

The local detective Jimmy Perez may seem relaxed and disorganized, but unlike some of the policemen who have been called in from Aberdeen, he is not certain they have their man. He is the type who won´t be satisfied until everything feels right.

Just like the engaging Vera Stanhope series, one of the things which characterizes Ann Cleeves´ new series is her talent for creating interesting characters, plus a fine sense of place, in this case the remote Shetland in the darkest and coldest winter period.

So the really good news is that this fine story is the first in a quartet!

See the post Ann Cleeves wrote for this blog in April where she explains why she came up with Jimmy Perez.

Ann Cleeves, Sort som ravnen (2008).
Denne krimi er den første af Ann Cleeves´ krimier, som er oversat til dansk.

Historien begynder hos Magnus, som sidder helt alene i sit køkken lige efter midnat. Det er nytår, og han lader lyset være tændt, fordi det kunne være, nogen ville kigge ind – selv om det ikke er sket i adskillige år.

Helt uventet banker to unge piger på. De har været i Lerwick for at fejre Hogmanay, den traditionelle skotske nytårsfest. Gamle, tungnemme Magnus nyder deres visit, og opfatter slet ikke, at de bare gør det for at vise, de tør.

Nogle få dage senere bliver en af pigerne, seksten år gamle Cathrine Ross, fundet død efter at have været på besøg hos Magnus igen. I de lokales øjne er sagen nærmest afsluttet med det samme, fordi Magnus også var indblandet i en sag, hvor en lille pige forsvandt sporløst nogle år tidligere. Elleveårige Catriona besøgte ofte Magnus og hans gamle mor.

Den lokale kriminalinspektør Jimmy Perez er tilsyneladende afslappet og uorganiseret, men i modsætning til flere af de tilkaldte politifolk fra Aberdeen, er han slet ikke sikker på, de har den rigtige person. Perez er typen som bider sig fast, indtil han er helt sikker i sin sag.

Ligesom i den skønne Vera Stanhope-serie, er det typisk for Ann Cleeves´ nye serie, at hun har et stort talent for at skabe interessante personer, samt et tiltalende miljø, i dette tilfælde den fjerne ø Shetland i den koldeste og mørkeste vinterperiode.

Så den aller-bedste nyhed er, at denne velskrevne historie er den første i en serie på fire!

Se det indlæg, Ann Cleeves skrev til min blog i april, hvor hun forklarer, hvorfor hun opfandt Jimmy Perez-figuren.

Ann Cleeves, Hidden Depths (2007)

[Denne serie er desværre ikke oversat til dansk – i hvert fald ikke endnu]

Julia Armstrong comes home late from her first night out with ´the girls´ for ages, only to find her sixteen-year-old son Luke drowned in the bath tub. As he has been depressed lately, Julia thinks it is suicide, but the police have to tell her that her son has been killed.

Felicity Calvert is a housewife with husband and four children. Her main role in life is keeping her husband well fed and happy so he can concentrate on his important, academic career. Their young son James brings home a teacher trainee who wants to rent their cottage. A bit hesitant Felicity shows her around. The place is cleaner and tidier than she would have expected, and who put the fresh roses there? Soon the family find another body, however, and these insignificant details are forgotten.

This is just a case for Vera Stanhope, meddling with male academics who tend to underrate the abilities of the large, eccentric-looking investigator.

Just as I had expected, this novel was a delightful reading experience from beginning to end. It is difficult to say whether it is Ann Cleeves´ plots or her characters that are best.

And the language? I think my quotation from the other day says it all. If not, see what Martin Edwards wrote in a comment underneath it: “This particular scene is, I think, one of the very best pieces of writing by a fine author.”

A warm recommendation!

Bodies in Baths

Thank you to the visitors who played along (see below).

What surprises me is that no one has suggested Dorothy L. Sayers´ famous body in the bath “Whose Body” – the very first Lord Peter Wimsey story from 1923.

The teaser: a quotation from the first chapter of Ann Cleeves´ Hidden Depths.

“He had always been beautiful, even as a baby. Much lovelier than Laura, which had never seemed fair. It was the blond hair and the dark eyes, the long, dark eyelashes. Julie stared at him, submerged beneath the bath water, his hair rising, like fronds of seaweed, towards the surface. She couldn´t see his body because of the flowers. They floated on the perfumed water. Only the flower heads, not the stems or the leaves. There were the big ox-eye daisies which had grown in the cornfields when she was a kid. Overblown poppies, the red petals translucent now. And enormous blue blossoms, which she had seen before in gardens in the village, but which she couldn´t name.”

Promising, isn´t it? I am on page 92 now, and it just gets better … and better …

Ann Cleeves on "Crime for All"

(This week´s guest blogger is the well-known British crime fiction author Ann Cleeves . I have reviewed two of her Vera Stanhope novels recently, The Crow Trap and Telling Tales.)

Dorte’s invitation to contribute to her blog arrived while I was in France, at the Neuilly Plaisance book festival. This was quite different from the literature festivals I’ve attended in the US and the UK, more like a fair or a market. Each of us had a table displaying our books, and attempted to engage in conversation with the people walking past. The ultimate objective, of course, was to achieve a sale. From the first half hour it became clear that women should be my target audience. Only two men bought books over the weekend and both those asked for them to be signed for women. The French jackets are quite distinctive, with muted colours, rather beautiful. I asked my publicist if she thought the covers were putting off male buyers. She shrugged: ‘Perhaps, but most book buyers are women anyway.’ It would be interesting to know what Dorte’s readers in mainland Europe make of that view! Is it a generally accepted truth?

The famous Golden Age authors were women writing male heroes. Of course there are lots of exceptions, but Christie’s Poirot and Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey were the big names. I could never understand the idea of Poirot; Jane Marple was a sympathetic character, but Poirot held no attraction for me. I wonder if men enjoyed these plot-driven books, the element of the puzzle, more than I did. Peter Wimsey was a different matter entirely. I have yet to meet a man who doesn’t despise GAUDY NIGHT for its sentimentality and lack of structure while I always find myself a little bit in love with the central character by the end of the book.

I grew up reading Sayers and Allingham, so it’s not surprising that I began by writing a male central character and a male central character who was, if not aristocratic, sufficiently wealthy to solve crimes in his spare time. Vera Stanhope grew out of my dismay that heroines, even heroines written by feminists, tended to be young, reasonably good looking and physically fit. It didn’t occur to me that she might pull in a readership that was predominantly female. I don’t believe writers think in that way; most of us write the books we would enjoy reading.

So, why have a male hero for the Shetland books? Again this wasn’t the result of a reasoned plan. I was looking for a Shetlander born and bred, who was also something of an outsider. Perez’s exotic name and Mediterranean appearance – the fiction is that his ancestors were washed ashore from a wrecked Armada ship – work for this theme, but so too does the fact that’s he’s something of a wimp, what his first wife describes as ‘emotionally incontinent.’ Fishing and crofting is demanding physical work. The stereotypical Shetlander is a hard-drinking, hard-working Viking. Perez is sympathetic, rather gentle and doesn’t fit the image. In this too, he’s an outsider.

Looking back at emails from readers over recent months, I’ve received approximately an equal number from men and women. Perhaps that’s because place is so important in the books and landscape doesn’t have a gender bias. It would be interesting to hear what the readers of Dorte’s blog make of that idea too.
Thank you so much Ann Cleeves for taking the time to write this interesting contribution to my April theme. And to my readers: remember to comment on Ann´s questions.


Krimi for Alle
(skrevet af den kendte britiske krimiforfatter Ann Cleeves, som er på vej ud på det danske krimimarked. Hun har foreløbig fået udgivet Sort som Ravnen på forlaget Cicero, og er på vej med Hvide Nætter. Jeg har anmeldt to af hendes tidligere krimier for nylig, The Crow Trap og Telling Tales)

Dortes invitation til at skrive et indlæg til hendes blog kom mens jeg var i Frankrig, som deltager af Neuilly Plaisance bogfestivalen. Det var en meget anderledes oplevelse end de litteratur-festivals jeg har deltaget i i Storbritannien og USA, mere i retning af et marked. Hver af os havde en bod, hvor vi udstillede vore bøger, og forsøgte at komme i snak med folk som gik forbi. Hovedformålet var naturligvis at sælge bøger. Allerede efter den første halve time stod det klart, at kvinder måtte blive min målgruppe. Kun to mænd købte bøger i løbet af weekenden, og de bad begge om at få dem signeret til en kvinde. De franske bogomslag er meget karakteristiske, ganske smukke i dæmpede farver. Jeg spurgte min agent, om hun troede, omslagene skræmte mandlige kunder væk. Hun trak på skulderen: ”Måske, men flertallet af bogkunder er under alle omstændigheder kvinder.” Det ville være interessant at vide, hvad Dortes læsere på det europæiske fastland siger til det synspunkt. Er det en generelt vedtaget sandhed?

De berømte guldalder-forfattere var kvinder, som skrev om mandlige helte. Selvfølgelig er der masser af undtagelser, men Agatha Christies Poirot og Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey var de store navne. Jeg forstod aldrig ideen med Poirot; Jane Marple var en sympatisk person, men Poirot tiltalte mig ikke. Jeg spekulerer på, om mænd nød disse bøger, hvor plottet og puslespillet var drivkraften, mere end jeg gjorde. Peter Wimsey var en helt anden sag. Jeg har endnu til gode at møde en mand, som ikke foragter ´Peter Wimsey i Oxford´ for dens sentimentalitet og mangel på struktur, mens jeg altid opdager, at jeg er en lille smule forelsket i hovedpersonen ved slutningen af bogen.

Jeg voksede op med Sayers og Margery Allingham, så det er ikke så overraskende, at jeg begyndte at skrive om en mandlig hovedperson, og tilmed en mand som selv om han ikke var adelsmand, var tilstrækkeligt velhavende til at løse kriminalgåder i sin fritid. Vera Stanhope voksede ud af min utilfredshed med at heltinder, selv heltinder skabt af feminister, havde en tendens til at være unge, forholdsvis flotte og i fysisk god form. Det var ikke faldet mig ind, at hun måske ville tiltrække en læserskare, som fortrinsvis var kvinder. Jeg tror ikke forfattere tænker i de baner; de fleste af os skriver de bøger, vi selv ville nyde at læse.

Så hvorfor have en mandlig helt i Shetland-serien? Endnu en gang var det ikke ud fra en velovervejet plan. Jeg var på udkig efter en vaskeægte shetlænder, som samtidig var lidt af en outsider. Perez´ eksotiske navn og sydlandsk udseende – sagnet går at hans forfædre blev skyllet i land efter et skibbrud fra den Spanske Armada - fungerer i forbindelse med dette tema, og det samme gør den kendsgerning, at han er lidt af et skvat, eller som hans kone udtrykker det, ´følelsesmæssigt utæt´. Fiskeri og husmandsbrug er krævende, fysisk arbejde. Den stereotype shetlænder er en viking som arbejder hårdt og drikker tæt. Perez er forstående, temmelig mild, og passer ikke ind i billedet. Så også på det område skiller han sig ud.

Når jeg ser tilbage på de e-mails, jeg har modtaget fra mine læsere de seneste måneder, har jeg modtaget nogenlunde lige mange fra mænd og kvinder. Måske skyldes det, at miljøet er så vigtigt i serien, og landskaber taler ikke til noget bestemt køn. Det ville også være interessant at høre, hvad læserne af Dortes blog mener om den idé.

Tusind tak til Ann Cleeves for dette eftertænksomme bidrag til mit april-tema. Til læserne: husk at tænke over hendes spørgsmål, og skriv en lille kommentar.

Ann Cleeves, Telling Tales (2005)

[Denne charmerende krimiserie er desværre ikke oversat til dansk, men forlaget Cicero er begyndt at udgive hendes nye Shetland-serie, og jeg håber at kunne anmelde den første inden så længe]

See my review of the first in the series, The Crow Trap.

The second book about Inspector Vera Stanhope is a fine police procedural about the horrible murder of a teenage-girl, Abigail Mantel. Jeanie Long, who lives together with Abigal´s father, is charged and imprisoned, and peace settles on the local community again – or is this only a façade?

Abigail´s murder casts long shadows on her own family and that of her closest friend, Emma Bennett, and ten years later new things begin to happen, making the police realize that Jeanie could not have committed the first crime.

Even though Emma is married and has a little child, she has never really been able to forget Abigail. Emma and her husband seem to be kind and considerate people, but the reader gets an impression that they are both waiting for something, or not quite sure their marriage is really what they dreamed of.

Ann Cleeves gradually builds up suspense, including a creeping feeling that the narrator is not really to be trusted. Emma is an engaging narrator whom the reader feels much sympathy for, at least until it turns out that she spends a lot of time editing the story of her own life. So what are we to believe?

I thoroughly enjoyed this reunion with Vera Stanhope and the glimpses of the lonely human being behind the gruff façade. Stanhope is not a bland character who is always in control, but a stubborn and spontaneous protagonist I want to hear much more about in what in my opinion is a true ´crime for all´ series.

Ann Cleeves, The Crow Trap (1999)

- denne britiske krimi er desværre ikke oversat til dansk -
Reviewed as part of my 2009 thriller and suspense reading challenge (eco thriller).

“Bella had arranged her suicide as efficiently as she had done everything else in her life. In the torchlight she swung, hanging from a noose made of strong, nylon rope. Her face was white. She had prepared for the occasion by putting on lipstick and the silk top Rachael had bought her as a thank-you present after last season. Her black shoes shone so the torchlight reflected from them. She´d pulled two bales away from the wall and climbed onto them to tie the rope round a beam. Then, when she was ready, she had kicked one away.”

In this crime novel Ann Cleeves switches among the point of view of four women. The first voice is Rachael Lambert, the friend who discovers Bella´s body, and the team leader of an environmental survey near Kimmerston in Northumberland National Park. Rachael´s ambition is to be a confident and assertive leader, but at the same time she is afraid to appear rude. On the whole, Rachael struggles to find her own feet professionally as well as privately. She has had an affair with Peter Kemp, her boss, a man too charming to be true, but when Rachael met him, she was too young or romantic to see this.

We also follow Rachael´s team members, Anne Preece and Grace Fulwell. The three very different women do not really hit it off, to say the least. Anne Preece is a confident and reckless botanist who has had a number of affairs because her homosexual husband cannot satisfy her. She despices Rachael and regards Grace as a stuck-up madwoman.

Grace Fulwell is a pale young woman who prefers to keep her own company. In her chapters we learn that as a lonely foster child she “had to pretend at failure to be accepted at all by the other kids at school” and that she considers animals and facts easier to handle than human beings.

As Rachael cannot come to terms with Bella´s suicide, she engages her bossy and enterprising mother Edie to help her find out what lies behind. She realizes that she did not know Bella at all, and that the quiet, unobtrusive farmer´s wife has a tragic past, but Rachael and Edie do not make any real progress until a second woman dies.

We are not properly introduced to Vera Stanhope, the fourth and final voice, until nearly half-way through the book, but this remarkable woman is certainly worth waiting for.First of all, it is quite refreshing to meet a female detective who is more like a bag lady than a dainty beauty queen. Vera Stanhope does not do much to placate the people around her, either, in her direct, nearly sarcastic manner, “... if I do have a reputation for eccentricity, I have one too for getting results”

Just like Stephen Booth´s Ben Cooper and Diane Fry series, the hostile and dangerous environment plays an important role. An interesting, recurrent symbol is the crow trap with its live bait. It takes a long time, however, before the reader is able to figure out who is the bait and who is supposed to walk into the trap.

Vera Stanhope does get her results in the end, though, even if she is not at all as certain as she pretends, and after this first thrilling meeting with the grim landscape and characters of Northumberland this reader certainly craves for more! This is an unusually promising ´first in a series´.


Photo: sheep from Northumberland National Park