by Ann Cleeves
Part of Shetland
First published 2013
A journalist is found dead on the Shetland Islands. Detective Inspector Willow Reeves arrives from outside to lead the case. She needs local knowledge, and that means Jimmy Perez, even though he has kept his distance from police work for a while now. The dead man had grown up on Shetland but left years ago to build a career in journalism. Before he went, he was at the center of a scandal involving a young girl. Nobody on the islands has forgotten it. As Willow and Jimmy work the case together, they start to see that the journalist came back because he was after a story. Someone, or more than one person, wanted that story buried. The investigation pulls Jimmy deeper into the tight, watchful world of island life, where old grievances sit quietly beneath the surface and people protect their own. Dead Water is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves's Shetland series. It puts two investigators with very different relationships to the islands into the same room and lets the friction do its work.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, introspective, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: buried-secrets, fish-out-of-water, old-grievances, reluctant-partnership
Setting: Shetland Islands
Period: 21st-century
386 pages · Hardcover · Macmillan
Content warnings: death, murder