Dead Water - Ann Cleeves

Written by Ann Cleeves
Read by Kenny Blyth
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Shetland Island Mystery Series, Book 5
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release date: February 18, 2014
Duration: 10:01:03

A grieving detective clashes with an incoming supervisor to solve a pair of murders on the main island of Shetland.

Not long after photojournalist Jerry Markham has returned to Shetland after years in the south, someone runs his car off the foggy road from the oil terminal in Sullom Voe. Rhona Laing, the Procurator Fiscal of the district, finds his body in the boat in which she regularly rows with other women of Aith. When DI Willow Reeves arrives from the West Hebrides to supervise the subsequent investigation, she might as well be from another world. Willow grew up on a commune, wears baggy clothes that offend the obsessively tidy Laing, and is occasionally highhanded with the local force, including Detective Jimmy Perez.

Still battling depression after the murder of his fiancee, Perez resents taking orders from a stranger, especially one he’s attracted to in spite of himself. Interviews with Markham’s family, his best friend, the young woman Markham got pregnant and abandoned, and the widower she’s about to marry point to a green-energy movement as a common denominator among the involved parties. When a supposed straw effigy turns out to be a human–and a dead one at that–Perez and Reeves further question the real motive behind the murders and demand to know what Laing is hiding.

The tensions between those who wish to preserve their traditions and those who seek the opportunities of new technologies are subtly illustrated. Cleeves keeps readers guessing about the perpetrator’s identity until the final pages.

Although some of the characters are sketchier than the setting itself, the well-constructed procedural gains another dimension from Jimmy’s re-engagement with his work and his life.