by Ann Cleeves
Part of Shetland
First published 2007
New Year's Eve on the Shetland Islands. Magnus Tait, a solitary man the community has never trusted, sits in his house waiting for visitors who do not come. The next morning, a teenage girl is found murdered near his home. For many in Shetland, the case is already closed. Magnus is odd, he is isolated, and suspicion lands on him fast and hard. Inspector Jimmy Perez is not so sure. He begins to dig, and the investigation pulls him away from the obvious suspect and into the longer history of the islands themselves. People who have lived there their whole lives have things they would rather leave buried. The further Perez goes, the more resistance he meets. Ann Cleeves won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, one of Britain's most prestigious crime fiction prizes, for this novel. It is the first book in the Shetland series. The landscape is cold and close, the community is tight and watchful, and the dead girl had a life that no one is eager to explain. Perez has to decide how much of the truth Shetland is willing to give up.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, brooding, dark, isolated, suspenseful
Tropes: hidden-secrets, procedural-investigation, scapegoating, unreliable-community
Setting: Shetland Islands
Period: New Year's Eve, 21st-century
384 pages · Hardcover · Minotaur Books
Content warnings: death, murder