RAVEN BLACK: Shetland Island Quartet Book One - Ann Cleeves

From the back of the book: Winner of Britain’s coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleeves introduces a dazzling new suspense series to U.S. mystery readers.

Raven Black begins on New Year’s Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

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I don't know what it is about mysteries set anywhere in England, Scotland, or Ireland, but they seem to be darker. Dark days, darker nights, dark personalities to decipher.

Inspector Jimmy Perez has a murder of a young girl to solve, one that has similar patterns to a girl who went missing years before. That one has gone unsolved, the girl still missing. The one tie is a solitary, slightly unhinged man. The girls were seen at Magnus' house before going missing.

There are side stories that intertwine throughout the book, lonely characters with dark secrets interacting bringing the book to a startling conclusion.

I really cannot wait to read the rest of the quartet. I have the second, WHITE NIGHTS, on the WWBL highlighted as a soonest get.

Visit Ann at: www.anncleeves.com

Five dark Shetland Isles beans......