Customer Reviews

Raven Black - A Thriller

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Have you ever read a new-to-you author and wondered what on earth took you so long to discover them? RAVEN BLACK is Ann Cleeves 19th novel and I'm wondering why I wasn't aware of her before now. She has two series and a number of stand-alones to her name.

RAVEN BLACK is the first of a planned quartet of books set on the Island of Shetland, one of a large group of small islands to the North of Scotland of which only fifteen are inhabited. It's a small place, easily cut off from the rest of the world if the weather is bad. Everyone knows everyone else and people feel comfortable going out and leaving their house unlocked. This sense of security is shattered when sixteen-year-old Catherine Ross is found one cold January morning lying in the snow, strangled to death with her own scarf. The obvious suspect is old Magnus Tait who everyone knows isn't "the full shilling". Magnus lives alone in the cottage of his late mother and was the prime suspect a number of years earlier when a young girl named Catriona disappeared.

Detective Jimmy Perez is the first investigator on the scene. He grew up on the neighbouring Fair Isle and is familiar with the locals and the way of life. Determined to get a head start before the Senior officer and his team arrive from Aberdeen on the mainland<. ,> Jimmy begins to question the locals. Luckily for Jimmy his senior officer, the driven energizer-bunny Inspector Taylor, is wise enough to recognize that Jimmy's local knowledge is an asset and allows him to have his head. Together they try to unravel the inter-connecting relationships and secrets to discover who killed Catherine.

RAVEN BLACK works well on a number of levels. First off it's a first-class whodunit. All the clues are there if you can figure it out (I didn't). On top of that, the author gives the reader a glimpse of life in a small isolated community. A fascinating layer-cake of things determine attitudes: an unacknowledged hierarchy revolving around how long a given family has lived on the island and their prosperity or otherwise; open secrets that aren't spoken about; the difficulties recent arrivals have in being accepted and a whole host of other things. I could give you examples but that would spoil half the intrigue of the book.

On Ann Cleeves' website (...) Anne has given her reasons for planning on writing only four books in this series. To quote the author "While Shetland couldn't sustain an indefinite series - there are limited plot lines and it would stretch credibility to have too many murders in such a small community - I would like to write more about Jimmy Perez. The islands lie so far to the north that seasonal variation is dramatic. I think Shetland could carry four novels, each set at a different time of the year. It will be like reading about four different places. The pace and flavour of each book will be different, reflecting the season in which it's set."

I shall look forward to Cleeves' next Shetland book with a great deal of anticipation.

This mystery is set in the Shetland Islands which gives it a different and somewhat mystical air from the start. But far better than the setting are the plot and the characters.

There is not a cut-out character in this book. From the retarded old man/prime suspect to the police inspector to the single mother divorcee, the teens, one of their mothers and on and on. Every character is drawn with complexity. They are likeable and detestable and they all draw the reader in from the outset. "Knowing" so many characters in a book is rare and makes for a rich novel whether or not it is mystery.

The plot, too, is terrific. Immediately upon the discovery of the body, the town suspects the old man since the population has always "known" he abducted a girl years before. It's a bit too obvious, or so the inspector thinks. As characters enter the scene, every one waves a flag of suspicion. There is motive and opportunity aplenty. Until the very end there is suspense and mystery.

This is a great mystery that deserves the awards that Ms Cleeves won. The police inspector is such a great character - intelligent, calm, conflicted in his personal life (without dark cynicism so popular these days) - that I hope Ms Cheeves brings him out in another novel.

When I find a book like this, I want to share my enjoyment with the world of readers. It was truly one of the best I've read in a long time. From the first sentence to the last, it held my interest. I've never been to the Shetland Islands but I feel as though I have now. And, the psychological element of the characters is intriguing. Motives for the murders abound, and just when you think you know who the killer is, you're surprised at the ending. Ms. Cleeves has a wonderful writing style. She gives us a cold, but beautiful island populated by people who bring their inner demons to this isolated spot of the world. I'm eager to read more of this author's work.

I had temporarily forgotten about Ann Cleeves and that was ungrateful of me because for several years she provided me with hours of rich entertainment. Moreover I once had the pleasure of observing her serving on a panel of writers at a mystery writers' convention (London, 1990). I do not remember the other three panellists, but the total and very entertaining illusion that I was watching an extraordinarily bright, witty sixth former, barely subduing her amusement at the whole business, lives on. She began by writing stories based around `twitchers' - UK-speak for birdwatchers - which were as informed by insider experience as they were well plotted and well furnished with interesting characters. `Twitchers' visit many interesting haunts around the British Isles so it was a well-conceived basis for a series infused with a strong sense of place. Then she launched a new series centred in Northumbria with a regular police inspector to solve her mysteries. These I found even more successful. Now she turns up nineteen novels later with Raven Black, set in the Shetland Islands. Ann Cleeves' sense of place is as strong as ever and I suspect that any readers who have longed to retire from it all among the hills and wild beaches of Shetland will find this book a bracing douche of reality. However, to each their own. Some years earlier a young girl vanished and a local, slightly retarded, loner was suspected, even more by the community than the police. Now Catherine, a sixteen year old schoolgirl, who with her only friend, Sally, had recently called at the earlier suspect's cottage, is found dead with ravens pecking her viciously. Inspector Perez arrives from Lerwick. He is not in charge of the case, but is the local man and the man in the field. An odd man, born on Fair Isle, a tiny island even more remote than Shetland, descended (according to legend) from the survivor of an Armada wreck, almost too sympathetic both of suspects and victims, he doubts the `scapegoat's' guilt. He wanders the community, drinking tea, listening more than questioning. The community has fewer secrets after the passing of this gentle man. Ann Cleeves has matured into a novelist capable of deeply observed characters. I shall rush to catch up on other novels from recent years.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, mostly for the character depictions, and descriptions of Shetland Island living. The murder itself was unexpected for such a small place. A young life was snuffed out for no apparent reason and the tiny police department had it's work cut out for itself. Detective Perez proved to be a determined, intelligent, warmly human person. The other characters were all fleshed out equably well. I would recommend this book for any mystery lover who also enjoys reading about different areas and people.

I read this book, an intro for me to Ann Cleeves, after reading the first two books of Louise Penny's series on Three Pines. The latter two had set such a clear sense of place and character, most enjoyed, that I was hoping Cleeves would do the same for the Shetlands. And she does - a closeted community, a sense of isolation, of cold, harsh land and sea - and a slowly developing mystery surrounding disappearances and death. This is not a book for those who want "action per page." It is for those who want to be enveloped in that sense of place, to begin to understand some characters they may meet in her further Shetland Islands stories and to be comfortable with the steady evolution of the characters immediately involved with the mysteries. No easy nutshell descriptions here. Her detective, Perez (yes, a Fair Islander of several generations - that's explained) is relatively lightly drawn. One doesn't get a deep sense of him but one sufficiently intriguing (and occasionally annoying) to want to know more about him.

This is a book for quiet evenings and cups of tea or a glass of Scotch. It's more a winter read, I think, than an easy summer read. The Shetlands cry out for fire-side warmth and focus. It's four stars because Perez's character is more a sketch than a drawing, and the solution of the dominant mystery - at least as to why Perez resolved it - left me slightly unsatisfied. Nonetheless - a good read, and I'm eager to read more.

Raven Black is the first book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland Quartet. The book cover includes a sub comment "A Thriller." While Raven Black is a good mystery, it was not the sort of book that kept me turning pages in suspense, or frightened me. Save for a final chase, the activities of the novel are modest, if sometimes unexplained, daily events in the lives of the characters. While reading, I felt the editing of the book could have been better. There was an occasional awkward sentence or spelling error. That said, the book was an enjoyable companion for the four or so days I carried it for spare time reading.

Cleeves' short chapters frequently jump to a separate thread of the story in what has become a standard technique in modern story telling of stringing together compact chapters ending with revelations/hints/cliff-hangars to hold the readers interest. Her tactic worked, engaging me, but not in the thriller, nail-biting sense. It's a common observation, to the point of being a simple truism, that video production for the theatre, DVD, and television as an end point now shapes many facets of modern story telling. Certainly true for Cleeves; nevertheless, Cleeves' short chapters perfectly fit my current grab-a-few-minutes-here-and-there reading style. I could always quickly finish a chapter before putting the book down knowing that I could later easily pick up the story.

Cleeves captures many of the idiosyncrasies of life on a small island. The urge to get off, the urge to return; the strong identity-dependency friction between locals and strangers; and the surprises of inbred, small town politics and social maneuvering. Her characters have memorable histories which separate them from simple, stock mystery characters.

The mystery revolves around the murder of a young local girl which re-energizes the island's memory of an unresolved disappearance ten years earlier, also involving a young local girl. Are the disappearance and the murder connected? Finally a third girl goes missing when the island is crowded with tourists for an annual island ritual/celebration. Working to solve the murder, Detective Perez probes island history unveiling deep and sometimes awkward connections between island folk. Finally, through his efforts, the surprising solutions to all three events emerge.

Raven Black is definitely worth a summer read. I will try one of Ann Cleave's continuations in the now complete Shetland Quartet.

Harrington Laufman
2010

I recently savored Raven Black by Ann Cleeves (now there's a compaction of historic names); mighty tasty indeed. Set in the Shetland Islands of today with concomitant fascinating historical, geographic and sociological detail, skillfully plotted, well written. The spouse is reading it now and gets grumpy when I ask him anything.

I was drawn to this story because of its setting in the Shetland Islands and I was not disappointed. The author writes well about island life among people in a remote area where there are no secrets except the ones that are most terrible. The story centers around two murders of young women - one eight years ago and one recent. Both girls were recently seen in the company of Magnus, the town's odd-man-out, whose limited intellect, sheltered life, and domination by his controlling mother, even in death, does not bode well for the poor guy to defend himself.

The story takes place shortly after New Years when everything is still and frozen and coated in snow - the chill of the season goes perfectly with the chill of the events. Magnus himself is a sa man hungry for companionship and fascinated by the two beautiful young women who show up at his house on New Years Eve, drunk and being silly. When one of them lies dead in a snow-covered field a few hours later Magnus' problems begin.

From the beginning I liked Magnus and felt sorry for him. It was clear he was in a completely disadvantaged position but who, among the cast of local characters, could be the killer. The hero of the story, handsome detective Jimmy Perez (please, authors, can we stop giving handsome heroes ridiculous diminutive names) is quickly on the case and both the mystery and a romance ensue.

Ann Cleeves is one of those writers whose writing is so clean and straight-forward that it never distracts you from the story. Her chracters are believable and mostly likable. As the plot begins to unravel and we see how everything occurred I can't say I was surprised by anything - it was well-done but not remarkable. I would definitely read other books in this series and found the books particularlymemorable for its portrait of Shetland Island life.

Author Ann Cleeves gave me a description of the landscape, weather, isolation and character of the people who live in the Shetland Islands. All of these things came together within her riveting story of the death of a sixteen year old girl. It was probably natural for the residents to immediately blame the old man who had always been an outcast. After all, they thought he had been responsible for the disappearance of a young girl years before. Why look to anyone else to solve this death which happened so close to his own home?

This first book in the series of Shetland Island thrillers was definitely a thriller for me. The author managed to tell the complete story of what had happened to Catherine Ross and still make the revelation of who the guilty party was a surprise to me. I usually can at least have the guilty party on my list of suspects, but not this time. Inspector Jimmy Perez is a very well executed character, having some character traits I've not encountered before in a policeman. It was a delight to meet such a man. The restrictions of travel and access to seemingly instantaneous police procedural methods created a sense of tension which continued throughout the book for me. I found the explanations for what happened logical and entirely possible. If an author can satisfy me as to how and why a situation has happened, then I am able to give myself up to their writing and simply explore where they want to lead. It is a talent that I don't always find when I'm reading mystery or thriller novels.

I am now ready to move on to the other novels in this series. Maybe next time it will be warmer and I won't feel compelled to drink so many cups of tea!