In this, the second of Ann Cleeve’s “Shetland”
series, the year has turned and it is midsummer in the northern isles, which
means long days and “white nights” during which darkness never really falls.
Even for locals like police detective Jimmy Perez it is unsettling; for
visitors off the newly docked cruise liner it is a tourist attraction to be
experienced.
An alternative attraction is the Herring
House gallery at the remote Biddista hamlet where an exhibition by the owner
Bella Sinclair and fellow artist Fran Hunter (now an item with Perez) is on
offer. However the gala opening is disrupted when a stranger throws a wobbler,
claiming memory loss and leaving in apparent confusion. He is later found
hanging from the roof of the boathouse on the beach.
Suicide by a crazed mainlander? Perez has
his doubts, and the post mortem confirms murder – but who is he, why did he
come to Shetland, was his distress real or an act and, most importantly, whodunit?
Again Perez is joined in the investigation
by Roy Taylor from the mainland and once more they work in uneasy alliance to
solve the riddle, Taylor digging into the stranger’s ID and background while
Perez seeks to find his local connection to the tight knit highland community.
There is an initial lethargy to the
proceedings, reflecting the white nights’ mood of the island, but this gets
ramped up as the investigation unearths events long buried but not forgotten.
The plot is tight and twisting with a
pleasing but fathomable complexity typical of the author; Perez’s romance moves
on but does not intrude; and the topographical detail remains authentic, but
subtly different under those long days and short white nights of the “summer
dim”.
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