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A review by lgpiper
White Nights by Ann Cleeves
4.0
It's summer in Shetland, and the nights don't exist. The light gets dimmer, but never actually goes out. This makes people a bit crazy.
Inspector Jimmy Perez has developed a bit of a relationship with Fran Hunter, a young woman somewhat involved in the first of the Shetland mysteries (Raven Black). Fran is an artist, and she has been asked to contribute to a local art exhibit by Bella Sinclair, a rather famous artist. Bella grew up on Shetland and has remained there, in between stints of gadding about with artist friends. The exhibit is in an old place that Bella has revamped and outfit with a fancy dining room.
Things don't go well. Hardly anyone shows up. One person who does show up is a man who has a breakdown in the middle of the show. He begins sobbing uncontrollably. Jimmy Perez gets him settled in the kitchen. The man has no i.d. on him and claims to have forgotten who he is.
Then, while Jimmy is off dealing with some other things related to the show, the man disappears. Some time later, he is found hanging from a rafter in a boat house. An apparent suicide, or something more sinister? Well, time to investigate.
There's lots of back story, of course. It seems that Bella Sinclair once hosted lots of artsy events at her house, and lots of the artsy types would pop by for a week or two. At the end of one of these events, the brother of a local crofter disappeared. No one had seen the brother for about ten years. The crofter, Kenny Thompson, hadn't even heard from brother, Lawrence, in all that time. It's not clear whether Lawrence left because Bella had jilted him, or the other way around.
Then too, perhaps the guy hanging in the boat house, who turned out to have been an actor of sorts, Jeremy Booth, had been present at some of those parties in the past. Perhaps also the writer, Peter Wilding, who has apparently taken up residence just about the time the action in the book unfolds.
Well, there are lots of loose ends and discussions about the ways that people living in small communities try keep sane in their dealings with each other. Everyone has secrets to hide, but then again in such a confined space, do people actually have secrets all their own?
Well, I'll stop. It's quite a GoodRead. But you don't have to take my word for it. The Shetland series appears to be wildly popular. I had the first book of the series on hold for 5½ months before a copy became available. This particular volume, the second of the series, was only on hold for 2½ months. It looks like things are winding down, my library tells me that I'll get the third in the series after only a month's being on hold.
Inspector Jimmy Perez has developed a bit of a relationship with Fran Hunter, a young woman somewhat involved in the first of the Shetland mysteries (Raven Black). Fran is an artist, and she has been asked to contribute to a local art exhibit by Bella Sinclair, a rather famous artist. Bella grew up on Shetland and has remained there, in between stints of gadding about with artist friends. The exhibit is in an old place that Bella has revamped and outfit with a fancy dining room.
Things don't go well. Hardly anyone shows up. One person who does show up is a man who has a breakdown in the middle of the show. He begins sobbing uncontrollably. Jimmy Perez gets him settled in the kitchen. The man has no i.d. on him and claims to have forgotten who he is.
Then, while Jimmy is off dealing with some other things related to the show, the man disappears. Some time later, he is found hanging from a rafter in a boat house. An apparent suicide, or something more sinister? Well, time to investigate.
There's lots of back story, of course. It seems that Bella Sinclair once hosted lots of artsy events at her house, and lots of the artsy types would pop by for a week or two. At the end of one of these events, the brother of a local crofter disappeared. No one had seen the brother for about ten years. The crofter, Kenny Thompson, hadn't even heard from brother, Lawrence, in all that time. It's not clear whether Lawrence left because Bella had jilted him, or the other way around.
Then too, perhaps the guy hanging in the boat house, who turned out to have been an actor of sorts, Jeremy Booth, had been present at some of those parties in the past. Perhaps also the writer, Peter Wilding, who has apparently taken up residence just about the time the action in the book unfolds.
Well, there are lots of loose ends and discussions about the ways that people living in small communities try keep sane in their dealings with each other. Everyone has secrets to hide, but then again in such a confined space, do people actually have secrets all their own?
Well, I'll stop. It's quite a GoodRead. But you don't have to take my word for it. The Shetland series appears to be wildly popular. I had the first book of the series on hold for 5½ months before a copy became available. This particular volume, the second of the series, was only on hold for 2½ months. It looks like things are winding down, my library tells me that I'll get the third in the series after only a month's being on hold.