This is the third in a planned "quartet" of books set on the Shetland Islands and featuring police detective Jimmy Perez, a Fair Isle native. Cleeves writes beautifully and constructs a story that is tight and compelling. Having said that, I don't feel that this book stands on its own very well. If a reader picked this one up and read it without the benefit of having read the first two, I think that he might become frustrated with the pacing of the book and lose interest. I HAVE read the first two and I was feeling like finishing the book was more of a chore than a pleasure. In the end, I did enjoy it but I think that Cleeves strayed too far away from her main characters to build a story around people who were not interesting. Too bad. I will read the fourth book ("Blue Lightning") and a actually hope that there are more books featuring Jimmy Perez. He is the strength of this series.
I found this entry in the Shetland series less compelling than the first two volumes, White Nights and Raven Black - because there was less of Jimmy Perez in it. Still, the book has lots of atmosphere and local color and a believable wrapup.
Scottish words I had to look up: yoal - bod - planticurb - cagoule - bothy - squaddie - trows - peerie - kishies
Mostly interesting because it is set on one of the smaller islands, Whalsey, so the atmosphere is more claustrophobic and the characters involved are all interrelated. I thought there was too much background on some of the characters that had nothing to do with the mystery and there were some threads at the end that were not cleaned up.
Although third in the series of books, the teleplay based on it was the first to be shown. It sort of follows the plot but moves the action from Whalsey to Bressay for no obvious reason. The TV character of Tosh does not appear in the book, but is a welcome addition to the show. Some characters were omitted and the biggest difference was the identity of the killer.
