2010 mystery, fourth in Cleeves' Shetland Island series. Jimmy Perez
is taking his fiancée Fran Hunter home to meet his parents on Fair
Isle. But over at the Fair Isle Field Centre, tensions among the
isolated birdwatchers may be building up to murder.
There are parts of this that work very well. I don't expect nice
ephemeral characters in an Ann Cleeves novel, and indeed I don't get
them; rather, each person has their embarrassing secret that they'll
lie to protect, and each of them is a bit pathetic in their own way.
There are plenty of motives for murder. The plot is deceptively
simple, resting on a well-hidden truth.
Meanwhile Perez is the only policeman on site when a major storm blows
in, so he has to do the initial investigation himself with only
occasional telephone contact with the outside world. That works very
well, and it's almost a disappointment when more police are able to
arrive.
On the other hand, some things happen which left me annoyed. One
murder in particular seemed inexplicable both on rational grounds and
in the mindset of the murderer; it felt as though it had been wedged
in to cause pain, and since it's the murder of a woman in order to
cause pain to a man, for my taste that's falling far too close to
Women in
Refrigerators.
Vg qbrfa'g uryc gung obgu gur frpbaq naq gur guveq ivpgvzf ner jbzra
jub jrer "cynlvat qrgrpgvir", obgu bs gurz irel flzcngurgvp punenpgref
jubfr shgherf V jnagrq gb ernq nobhg, naq V ng yrnfg tbg n fgebat
srryvat bs nhgube'f zrffntr gung jbzra ernyyl bhtug gb fgnl ng ubzr
naq yrnir vg gb gur ovt fgebat zra gb qb rkpvgvat guvatf; gur bayl
bgure jbzra jr zrrg ner va cnffvir be fhccbegvat ebyrf, rira va gur
cbyvpr, rkprcg sbe gur Cebphengbe Svfpny jub'f cbegenlrq irel
artngviryl. Gubhtu V znl or bire-vagrecergvat guvf.
In spite of all that, I think this does hold together, though it came
close to losing me at times. This is the last of the original
"Shetland Island Quartet", though Cleeves has since continued the
series; I may continue too, though I think I want a bit of a break
from them for now.
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