A couple of these books are seriously dreadful. Her first series of crime novels features the elderly naturalist, George Palmer-Jones. If a person's not heavily into birds - and Ann isn't - there's not much to do on Hilbre and that was when she started writing. They were the only residents, there was no mains electricity or water and access to the mainland was at low tide across the shore. Soon after they married, Tim was appointed as warden of Hilbre, a tiny tidal island nature reserve in the Dee Estuary.

She was attracted less by the ornithology than the bottle of malt whisky she saw in his rucksack when she showed him his room. While she was cooking in the Bird Observatory on Fair Isle, she met her husband Tim, a visiting ornithologist. After dropping out of university she took a number of temporary jobs - child care officer, women's refuge leader, bird observatory cook, auxiliary coastguard - before going back to college and training to be a probation officer. Ann's Shetland series bring us DI Jimmy Perez, investigating in the mysterious, dark, and beautiful Shetland Islands.Īnn grew up in the country, first in Herefordshire, then in North Devon. Ann's DI Vera Stanhope series of books is set in Northumberland and features the well loved detective along with her partner Joe Ashworth. 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.Ann is the author of the books behind ITV's VERA, now in it's third series, and the BBC's SHETLAND, which will be aired in December 2012. mystery readers with this unforgettable series debut. 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 U.S. 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. 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.

Shetland raven black