Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

               Scotland’s Northern Isles Geoffrey W. Sutton   The Shetland series is set in the Shetland Islands, which are at the far north of the United Kingdom. The stark landscape dotted with sheep, filled by the author with an intriguing variety of birdlife, and battered by storms seems like an ideal place for a series of murders especially when cold winters bring snow, dense fogs can obscure vision, and summers present with an eerie long evening light—the simmer dim. The lead detective is Jimmy Perez who was born on Fair Isle but works out of the police station in Lerwick on the main island. Jimmy had been married to Sarah who divorced him following a miscarriage. His team includes Sandy Wilson from the off island of Walsay and inspectors from elsewhere in Scotland. In the first story, Raven Black , we meet Fran Hunter who is divorced from Jimmy’s old school friend, Duncan Hunter. They have a daughter Cassie. The relationsh...

  Raven Black   Shetland Series Book 1 by Ann Cleeves Shortly after the New Year, Fran Hunter of Ravenswick finds incomer 16-year old Yorkshire lass, Catherine Ross, in the snow. She and her father were coping with the loss of her mother in different ways.  Black Ravens circle above her dead body. Fear quickly spreads in the community and Magnus Tait, a man on the margin of society, becomes the focus of suspicion by his neighbours. To make matters worse, another girl, Catriona Bruce, had disappeared eight years ago and Tait was a suspect in Catriona’s disappearance as well. Detective Inspector Roy Taylor, a large and energetic Englishman working in Inverness, joins local Shetland Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez and sergeant Sandy Wilson. As they solve Catherine’s murder, they also discover what happened to Catriona’s as well. In the background, a romance develops between Fran and Jimmy. I have a paperback version and recommend this to those who enjoy slow and thoughtf...