This is the third book in Cleeves’ Shetland quartet and in my opinion the weakest of the three I have read so far. It deals with the shooting of Mima Wilson on the island of Whalsay during an archaeological dig, was her death an accident or murder?
This book once again has the interesting portrayals of life in Shetland but the mixture of fictional characters and the real life Shetland archaeologist Val Turner didn’t seem to work and struck a false chord. The book was far too long and plodding. You don’t even find out if there has been a murder until two-thirds in and there is not a lot of tension. The dénouement is over in about five pages and unconvincing. This is a real shame as I loved her other novels in this series. I just hope the final one is a return to previous form.
I havent seen the BBC programme Shetland, that was based on this story yet but the reviews I have read on it which were not that positive, I don’t know if anyone else saw it but would be interested to know what people made of it. All I know is that I didn’t imagine Inspector Jimmy Perez to look like Douglas Henshaw.