I devour detective fiction for characterisation and geography. Who could not fall for Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club quartet? On the page they’re utterly compelling although it’s a pity about the film. Then there’s Simon Mason’s wonderful DI Ryan whose small boy is the most engaging child I’ve met in fiction for a long time. Elly Griffith hits every chord with forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway with the joys of the mysterious Norfolk marshes thrown in. I read Will Dean’s “Tuva” novels for icy North Sweden, Alexandra McClean for glorious Dorset (many childhood memories for me), William Shaw for the familiarity of Kent and Peter James for Brighton, where I have family and know the city well. And there are many other examples. Only Martin Walker disappoints. I love the Dordogne setting but vegetarian me is nauseated by the graphic hunting/shooting.fishing/cooking digressions.
Detective fiction plots are always implausible. That’s part of the deal. We suspend disbelief – very willingly in my case. It’s places and people that win the day
I was thinking about all this the other day when I heard Ann Cleeves talking to Michael Berkley on Radio 3’s Private Passions. I had read one or two of her Vera books but otherwise didn’t know her work. She explained in the interview how she’d discovered Shetland and met her late husband there on an ecology project. Then, having written with modest success for a long time, she thought of setting a detective story in Shetland. Raven Black was published in 2003. “It changed my life” she told Berkley. Since then there have been seven more books and a hugely successful BBC TV series starring, Douglas Henshall, which I’ve not watched – but might now. Series 10 airs this year.
It sounded just the ticket after sixteen days with Joseph Stalin (https://susanelkin.co.uk/articles/susans-bookshelves-stalin-the-court-of-the-red-tsar-by-simon-sebag-montefiore/) and I was entranced by the idea of the Shetland background. So I ordered Raven Black and met the gently charismatic but troubled Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez who comes from Fair Isle. He is regarded as an outsider by the inhabitants of fictional Ravenswick, a small island where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Families are intermarried and there are connections everywhere. Then a sassy, bright teenager named Catherine with an uneasy home life, is found murdered. Everyone connects it with the disappearance of a child, Catriona, who disappeared eight years earlier. Most people suspect an elderly man named Magnus Tait who has mental health problems and mild learning difficulties. It’s too obvious though and the reader can see from the start that this can’t be the solution no matter how suspicious it seems. I really liked the way Cleeves sets up a whole range of interesting characters, each with issues and flaws and then finally comes up with something which I certainly didn’t see coming.
Also in the mix are the beaches, the icy winter weather, the empty roads, the big skies and the traditions. Mendelssohn’s atmospheric Hebrides overture (inspired by a different archipelago away to the south west but not geographically dissimilar) kept rattling round my head all the time I was reading. Yes, I shall continue with this series. I want more Jimmy Perez. He deserves to find a more settled personal life and if that means the unlikely prospect of many murders in small communities then so be it.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Nye by Tim Price
