Dead Water

December 23, 2013
The murder of prying journalist Jerry Markham propels Cleeves's absorbing fourth Shetland mystery (after 2010's Blue Lightning). Shrewd Det. Insp. Willow Reeves, from the west of Scotland, deals with the tightly-wound local prosecutor, Rhona Laing, who discovered Markham's body and may know more than she's telling. Prickly Insp. Jimmy Perez, not yet returned to full-time duty after his fiancée's death, assists with interviews of the island's residents. Also in the mix are the dead man's parents and girlfriend, who have a different view of Markham than most of their neighbors; Evie Watt, Markham's former girlfriend, who works for the local community-development agency; and Evie's fiancé, John Henderson, who has secrets to hide. The tensions between those who wish to preserve their traditions and those who seek the opportunities of new technologies are subtly illustrated. Cleeves keeps readers guessing about the perpetrator's identity until the final pages. Agent: Sarah Menguc, Sarah Menguc Literary Agent (U.K.).

January 15, 2014
A grieving detective clashes with an incoming supervisor to solve a pair of murders on the main island of Shetland. Not long after photojournalist Jerry Markham has returned to Shetland after years in the south, someone runs his car off the foggy road from the oil terminal in Sullom Voe. Rhona Laing, the Procurator Fiscal of the district, finds his body in the boat in which she regularly rows with other women of Aith. When DI Willow Reeves arrives from the West Hebrides to supervise the subsequent investigation, she might as well be from another world. Willow grew up on a commune, wears baggy clothes that offend the obsessively tidy Laing, and is occasionally highhanded with the local force, including Detective Jimmy Perez. Still battling depression after the murder of his fiancee, Perez resents taking orders from a stranger, especially one he's attracted to in spite of himself. Interviews with Markham's family, his best friend, the young woman Markham got pregnant and abandoned, and the widower she's about to marry point to a green-energy movement as a common denominator among the involved parties. When a supposed straw effigy turns out to be a human--and a dead one at that--Perez and Reeves further question the real motive behind the murders and demand to know what Laing is hiding. Cleeves (Silent Voices, 2013, etc.) returns to a sea-bound land of crofters' cottages, barren rocks and fog, especially the fog surrounding the murders. Although some of the characters are sketchier than the setting itself, the well-constructed procedural gains another dimension from Jimmy's re-engagement with his work and his life.

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February 1, 2014

Broken-hearted DI Jimmy Perez sets aside his own grief to assist the local authorities with a case involving a murdered journalist. The victim had left the Shetland Islands for greener pastures, and it looks as if his return was the wrong move. This is the fifth series entry (after Blue Lightning) for the Gold Dagger Award-winning author. The books have become a BBC TV series, Shetland.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2014
In the sixth of Cleeves' Shetland Island series starring Inspector Jimmy Perez, a very controlled Scottish public prosecutor who seems passionate only about team-rowing, makes a discovery that threatens to tumble the Jenga-like structure of her life. The prosecutor, Rhona Laing, retrieves an unmoored boat and finds the body of a man seemingly placed across the seats, a briefcase next to the body. The dead man is a former local journalist who made good in London. The question facing Perez (who is inching his way back to work after the trauma of his fianc'e's death) and Willow Reeves, a detective inspector from the Inverness Serious Crime Squad sent to head the investigation, is what made the journalist a target? The answer has repercussions for the main characters, the tiny island of Aith, and for Scotland as a whole. Cleeves has an unusually deft hand with characters; not one of them seems purely plot-functional, and Perez's character keeps deepening with each book. The rough islands cresting the Atlantic fit the bleakness of the murders depicted here. This series is one of two that Cleeves has going; the other stars Northumberland detective Vera Stanhope and is a hit BBC series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)