Customer Reviews

White Nights: A Thriller (Shetland Island Quartet)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"White Nights" is the second in what the author calls her "Shetland Island Quartet" and that is a grand thing. Grand because now I know I can go back and read the first in the series, Raven Black, and still have two more to book forward to in the future. Excellent!

Police Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and his friend, Fran Hunter are about to go to an art showing at a local gallery in the town of Biddista. For Perez, he hopes this will be the chance to find out if their relationship will move beyond friendship in the future, for Fran, the first gallery showing of her art. But things are not to go smoothly. Few people show up for the show, a bizarre stranger causes a scene, and the next morning, the same man is found dead, hanging in a storage building on the beach. Although there was an attempt to make it look otherwise, the death was certainly murder and all the people connected with the small seaside community are suspect in the investigation, carried on by Perez and later, the Inverness police team brought in, headed by Inspector Roy Taylor.

The atmosphere of the book is engaging. Summer in the islands, because of the latitude, has only a few hours of dusty night each day and the constant light is said to have a crazy effect on people. Combine that with the constant presence of the sea, the treeless windswept hills, dotted with sheep, the fog off shore, always threatening to roll in once again, and the Shetlands themselves are almost like another character in the story.

Not to say that the characters themselves are not very good, because they are. Yes, it is a small community where many people are related and, if not, have often known each others all their lives. They think that they know everything about their neighbors but it turns out everyone, the locals and the outsiders alike, have their secrets. And those secrets are yet to take another great toll on the townsfolk.

This was a fine book, an excellent setting, very good characters, large and small, a engaging story and a very good read. I would certainly recommend it to mystery fans and I know I will be searching out more of Ann Cleeves books.

This is the second novel in a projected Shetland Islands Quartet, succeeding Cleeves's award winning "Raven Black." Again the lead character is Jimmy Perez, the local detective inspector. An unknown Englishman seemingly collapses into weeping at the opening of a Shetland art exhibition. When Jimmy takes him in tow, he has no identification and claims total amnesia. The next day his body is found hung in a fishing hut on a nearby jetty. A seeming suicide is soon identified as murder. This brings highly aggressive Detective Chief Inspector Roy Taylor to Lerwick from Inverness to lead the investigation, just as he did in "Raven Black."

The two cops could not be more different, but both play a part in solving the crimes. Taylor is abrasive and abrupt. Perez is unfailingly polite and gains information through patient inquiry, exploring relationships as he goes.

And relationships are at the heart of this book. The stories emerge from them: Relationships among the characters, relationships from the past affecting the present, even relationships between the people and the land itself. The nature of the relationships is determined, almost predetermined, by the deepest natures of the characters involved. Vanity, pride, ego and fear certainly play their parts, but love and its close cousin desire, thwarted, spurned and fulfilled, are what drive events. The crimes and their solutions are the natural outcomes of the relationships.

The writing here is as low key as Perez, quiet and almost gentle as it moves the story along to its devastating conclusion. The characters are realistic and well drawn, quite believable and convincing in every respect. If you like slam-bang crime novels with gunfire echoing on the page, this is not for you. But if you want a novel that explores how what is human in all of us can sometimes produce evil, and then explores its devastating consequences, you can't do better than this.

I am a picky reader of mysteries and this meets the bill on so many fronts - the characters are developed and interesting, the story and background of the plot are intriguing and one really can't get the clues too easily.

White Nights opens with an puzzling scene, a man who attended the opening of the Shetland Art exhibition was found the next day hanging in a fishing hut on a nearby jetty.

The community is so intertwined everyone knowing everyone elses business.

This book takes place in middle of summer, when there is light for 23 hours at a time. This plays havoc with the sleep-patterns of so many of the islanders. Throwing some of their normal attitudes and behaviour into havoc.

I highly recommend this book.

Mysteries are not my genre. The few I've started in recent years were written like TV dramas (stock characters and more action than nuance), so I've put them down. I picked this one for its setting and was pleasantly surprised.

Writer Ann Cleeves held my attention for two days as I followed Jimmy Perez on the mystery trail. Cleeves created excellent characters, people whom you'd realistically expect to live in the Shetland Islands. She has a good sense of timing, introducing people, their history, and their relationships to each other at a pace the reader can digest.

The setting is an isolated but sophisticated town with crofting and tourism as its economic mainstays.

The plot unfolds with character driven clues along the way. You have ideas, but are not sure what happened until the last pages when all the pieces come together.

There is a particularly nice interplay between the local detective, Perez, and his boss from "the city", Taylor.

My only criticism is the punctuation. Quotations are set off by only one mark and not the conventional two (that is, ' and not "). Periods are left off abbreviations which my eye wanted to see.

There were some Scottish and British expressions. Most like "collect my daughter" were easily deciphered, but I couldn't figure out or find them all - for instance, what is a "voe"?

I highly recommened this for mystery readers. Those who aren't into mysteries, but appreciate a good story, will enjoy this too.

Author Ann Cleeves does a fine job of evoking the environmental austerity and isolation of Scotland's northern Shetland Islands in this very well written murder mystery/police procedural. The rugged landscape is as important as the rugged characters that Cleeves conjures for this tale which eventually involves three murders that protagonist Inspector Jimmy Perez must connect and solve.

In this author, there is a subtle and intelligent hand that works at a steady, unspectacular pace, but keeps the reader interested to the last page. No false notes and an ending that is surprising but logical. "White Nights" is the work of a writer who knows her context and human nature and respects her readers' need for solid, believable characters with off-the-tracks moments. Very enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

I have really enjoyed Ann Cleeves' work - I loved Raven Black as well as The Sleeping and the Dead. I was therefore thrilled to pick this book up - her continuation of the characters, settings, and some of the story lines she had started so expertly in Raven Black.

Unfortunately, this second novel lacks the taut pacing pacing and overall sense of ... menace ... and impending danger - personal and professional - to characters we care about - that made the first novel so successful, at least to me. I found it to meander almost aimlessly from new character to new character - so much so that I lost track of everyone, and worse, found myself not much caring. There were too many people, with too many side stories, and too many chats over tea and scones. This, unlike Raven Black, is not a "moody, atmospheric thriller" in a remarkable setting with deeply etched characters. It's more of a ... stroll ... with lots of time to talk about lots of things.

Not my cup of tea. I'm hoping her next one is better.

This is the second novel in a projected Shetland Islands Quartet, following Cleeves's award winning "Raven Black." Again the lead character is Jimmy Perez, the local detective inspector.

This is the second novel in a Shetland Islands Quartet Again the lead character is Jimmy Perez, the local detective inspector. An unknown Englishman seemingly collapses into weeping at the opening of a Shetland art show. When Jimmy takes him under his wing, the man has no identification and claims total amnesia. The next day his body is found hunging in a fishing hut on a nearby jetty. A seeming suicide is soon identified as murder.

Secrets of the past start to emerge about a few of the town folk. Inspector Perez follows the clues with his knowledge of the area making is easier for him to investigate compared of the police from the mainland.

The writing was impressive, well written, the characters well-drawn I liked the style, good dialogue and descriptions. The story progresses at a good pace. The Narrator does an excellent job.

I highly recommend this story. Looking forward to the next in the series.

Halfway to the Arctic, the Shetland Islands are beset by dark winters and weirdly light summer nights. RAVEN BLACK, the first book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland mystery series, takes place in winter. In WHITE NIGHTS, the second book, unnaturally luminous nights lead the sleep-deprived inhabitants to mad acts, even crime.

The action centers on artists and writers. An art show is under-attended, sabotaged by a leaflet campaign falsely proclaiming that the show has been canceled. To make matters worse, a strange man in black falls on his knees and weeps in front of one of the paintings at the exhibit. Later he's found murdered, wearing a clown mask.

The reader can look forward to more murders, equally inexplicable, as Inspector Perez gently probes into local secrets that have their roots far in the past.

Perez's love affair with Fran Hunter, artist and art teacher, is going quite well in this book. On the other hand, his relationship with the senior inspector from Inverness, Roy Taylor, is a bit tense.

Taylor needs to be in control. But while he's shouting over phones, hammering at doors and firing off aggressive questions, it's Perez with his hesitant, indirect approach who gets results. The contrast between the two is interesting to observe.

I find Ann Cleeves' prose style unremarkable, but it doesn't really matter. Cleeves' forte is storytelling. She's got a great setting, her characters are original and very human - and it's always a challenge to figure out whodunit.

This was a wonderful book with the continuing story of Jimmy Perez who first appeared in Raven Black. The beautiful mysterious Shetland Islands are the setting for this mystery. The long summer nights in this land of midnight sun figure into the ambiance of this book. White Nights has you guessing until the last page. The ending is a shocker! The characters are rich and intriguing. The story is better than average. This book reminded me of Peter Robinson or Priscilla Masters. I can hardly wait until the next book in the series comes out.

A summer house party at The Manse, a large two-storey house at Biddista, with its tall thin church window that lights up the staircase. A masquerade ball hosted by the artist Bella Sinclair, a native of the Shetland Islands. A photo of male admirers who surround the artist clad in her signature red dress.

But that was fifteen years ago. Ann Cleeves opens her second Shetland Island mystery WHITE NIGHTS at The Herring House gallery with an art exhibition. The setting is a small fishing community near Lerwick, the capital and main port of the Shetland Islands. It's midsummer, called "summer dim" by the locals. A theatre ship The Motley Crew is moored near the end of the pier. Tourists stream ashore from cruise ships.

Jimmy Perez has returned from Fair Isles to head the police investigation of two murders. Roy Taylor, the Inverness detective, flies down to help. A stranger has been found hanging in the Biddista hut on the beach where the lads keep their fishing stuff. A folk musician is found at the bottom of the Pit o'Biddista, a great gouge of land near the shore.

Cleeves again weaves a strong sense of place into her thriller constantly describing the "bizarre, bleak, treeless" countryside. Several characters return from the award-winning RAVEN BLACK, the first of her Island mysteries. Interesting new personalities appear. Foremost is Bella Sinclair, mythic artist: "Wild in her youth...but now rather unapproachable, intimdating. And rich." Peter Wilding, a fantasy writer interested in the local Viking myths and the art of one Bella Sinclair. The crofter Kenny Thomson and his wife Edith. The chef at The Herring House, Martin Williamson, his wife Dawn, and his widowed mother, Aggie.

WHITE NIGHTS is a proper updated Golden Age murder mystery: well plotted, page-turning, limited but memorable characters and a satisfying ending. Next up is the third installment of The Shetland Island Quartet, Red Bones, set in the spring: a time of rebirth and celebration. And a time of death: April is the cruelest month.