Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
ARRRGGHHH!! I was SO looking forward to this book! As the fourth and final book in a quartet of books set in the Shetland Islands, the author was supposed to tie things up neatly and leave the reader satisfied. For the first 326 pages, I thought she was going to do that and then, she sucked the life right out of the book for me. SOOO disappointing. I'm not sure if the ending has left the possibility that the author will continue with the same main character but even if she does, I'm not certain I trust her enough to read any more.
This is another of the Shetland series by Ann Cleeves. Jimmy Perez takes his fiancée, Fran Hunter, to Fair Isle to visit his parents, Big James and Mary. While they're there, Angela Moore, the Warden of the Fair Isle Field Center, is found to have been murdered. As the only police presence available, Jimmy is made to begin the investigation.
It seems that the Fair Isle Field Center is housed in an old, out of service, light house. They do bird tracking. That is, they trap, catalog, and band birds. It's also a popular spot for avid bird watchers to visit. So, within the confines of the Field Center is a small band of bird watchers, Angela's husband, Maurice, Maurice's "difficult" teenage daughter (by a previous marriage), Poppy, and the Field Center cook, Jane Latimer.
It turns out that bird watchers can be a pretty competitive bunch, fighting each other to be first to take credit for a rare sight. Then too, Angela appears to be rather a piece of work, bossy and profligate.
The first suspect is Poppy, who clearly has "issues" with her step mother. But after a bit of poking around, it seems Poppy is off the hook. So, the painstaking process of investigating and verifying the whereabouts of the other members of the birding community begins. Somewhere along the way, the cook is also murdered.
Eventually, of course, Jimmy figures things out and the guilty party (or -ies?) is caught.
It seems that the Fair Isle Field Center is housed in an old, out of service, light house. They do bird tracking. That is, they trap, catalog, and band birds. It's also a popular spot for avid bird watchers to visit. So, within the confines of the Field Center is a small band of bird watchers, Angela's husband, Maurice, Maurice's "difficult" teenage daughter (by a previous marriage), Poppy, and the Field Center cook, Jane Latimer.
It turns out that bird watchers can be a pretty competitive bunch, fighting each other to be first to take credit for a rare sight. Then too, Angela appears to be rather a piece of work, bossy and profligate.
The first suspect is Poppy, who clearly has "issues" with her step mother. But after a bit of poking around, it seems Poppy is off the hook. So, the painstaking process of investigating and verifying the whereabouts of the other members of the birding community begins. Somewhere along the way, the cook is also murdered.
Eventually, of course, Jimmy figures things out and the guilty party (or -ies?) is caught.
Unfortunately before I read book #3 even I saw a massive spoiler for this on Amazon reviews which informed the way I read it (and probably book #3 as well). That aside, I do think this series gets better and better; this instalment is set on Fair Isle and mostly in one location and really nails the claustrophobia of being trapped on a small isolated island in bad weather with an unravelling murderer on the loose. I also unexpectedly enjoyed all the birdwatching stuff.
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Mostly I liked this crime novel and its solution. The setting was interesting, with the isolation of the field station and the birders living in it, and the investigative process was interesting. At the same time, I enjoyed a break from the typical alcoholic miserable divorced detective, because Perez and Fran were genuinely happy and convincing as a couple. At least until the end. It was wholly unnecessary to me to kill off Fran. I was unhappy to see the only significant female character die, and after the crime had been solved and there was no profit in it for the murderer, too. I sincerely hope this doesn't mean the series devolves into focusing on Perez' angst about his fridged fiancée.
Murder among birders on a remote island, so it gets some points for setting. Style is unremarkable, lacking wit, energy, color. Not a lot to the plot, as it fills the pages instead with character details, something along the lines of P.D. James, but the inner and external voices of the characters are not differentiable. The narrator of the audiobook edition was adequate but also unremarkable, opting not to employ authentic accents. As a fan of the TV series, I was disappointed.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No