Showing results by author "Ann Cleeves" in All Categories

The huge and powerful hawk dominated the scene. Its talons pierced the woman’s flesh and the beak pointed towards her eyes . . .The sight is a particularly horrible shock for George Palmer-Jones, ornithologist and amateur detective, as he was an old friend of the victim Eleanor Masefield. George and his wife Molly are staying at Eleanor’s family-run hotel, but Molly can’t help but be suspicious of Eleanor. Is Eleanor a black widow—a ruthless manipulator of all those caught in her far-reaching web? Can Molly prove it in time to prevent another death?

Ann Cleeves is well known for her 'Vera', 'Shetland', and 'Two Rivers' crime series, all of which have been adapted into hit TV shows. She was presented with the CWA Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2017, and was appointed an OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours List for services to reading and libraries. This collection includes full-cast dramatisations of the first two 'Shetland' novels featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, as well as three short stories and a discussion with the bestselling author.

A visit to her local prison brings DI Vera Stanhope face to face with an old enemy: former detective superintendent, and now inmate, John Brace. Brace was convicted of corruption and involvement in the death of a gamekeeper—and Vera played a key part in his downfall. Now, Brace promises Vera information about the disappearance of Robbie Marshall, a notorious wheeler-dealer who disappeared in the mid-nineties, if she will look out for his daughter and grandchildren. He tells her that Marshall is dead, and that his body is buried close to St Mary’s Island in Whitley Bay.

For Dorothea Cassidy, Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own, a welcome respite from the routine duties of being a vicar’s wife. But one Thursday in June would be her last—the day Dorothea Cassidy was strangled. As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea's last hours.

A rare and unrecorded sea bird captures all the birders attention while right under their noses the most fanatical birder of them all disappears . . . only for Greg Franks’ corpse to later be found floating in the sea, the head bludgeoned. Had it not been for Greg, amateur detective George Palmer-Jones would not have been on the bird watching trip in Cornwall to the first place. Greg Franks’ anxious parents had hired him to try and persuade their errant son to return home. George would have turned the case down flat but the offer of a free weekend of bird watching was too tempting to resist.

The youth theater cast are in their places but Gus Lynch’s female lead, Gabriella, is missing—that is, until she’s found in the boot of his car . . .Detective Inspector Stephen Ramsay and Sergeant Gordon Hunter are assigned to head the murder enquiry, meanwhile violence is escalating on the Starling Farm Estate as police battle to contain the latest outbreak of joyriding. Is Gabriella’s death connected to the events at Starling Farm?

On Shetland, the launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed – a stranger bursts into tears, claiming not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day, Inspector Jimmy Perez finds his dead body in a fisherman’s hut. Initially, it seems to be a straightforward case of suicide – yet this is no desperate act. Instead, it soon becomes clear, this is the work of a cold-blooded killer. As Perez investigates, he finds himself mired in the hidden secrets of a small community. Then another body is found.

As the snow falls thickly on Newcastle, the shouts and laughter of Christmas revelers break the muffled silence. Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along in the jostling crowd onto the Metro. But when the train is stopped due to the bad weather, and the other passengers fade into the swirling snow, Jessie notices that one lady hasn't left the train: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed. Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday festivities.

A routine weekend visit by the Gillibry Bird Observatory Trust is made memorable by the owner’s announcement that he is going to sell the island. A sale would mean the end of the Observatory, which makes life worth living for many of the birders on the island. Then a fire in Charlie Todd’s cottage adds to their distress, followed by a fierce storm. The next morning, the birders find Charlie dead in a bird hide. Suddenly their pleasant September weekend assumes a dangerous new face.

Landlord and politician Marcus Grenville wants to convert Ursula Ottway’s beautiful cottage into a holiday residence. So when Ursula discovers that the illegal use of poisoned bait on Grenville’s land has killed not only a rare bird of prey but her two beloved cats, she storms to his house and threatens revenge.

The betrayal of those closest burns most of all.... Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate. He knows it will mean his boss, Willow Reeves, returning to run the investigation, and confronting their complex relationship.

In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the main road and sweeps down to the sea. At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and water smash through a house in its path. Everyone thinks the home is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. Perez soon becomes obsessed with tracing her identity and realizes he must find out who she was and how she died.

Old college friends Rob, Oliver, and Mick reunite on an American bird watching tour. It is the first time in twenty years the three have been together—since their fateful trip to America when they met the enigmatic Laurie . . . The tour party is hoping for spectacular sights at High Island on the Upper Texas coast but, as the rain pours down and swarms of migrating birds fall from the sky seeking shelter, the birders are distracted by a far more shocking sight: Mick’s dead body.

Meg Morrissey refuses to believe that her husband James committed suicide. James was in high spirits after he’d finally completed his long-awaited autobiography. He didn’t leave a suicide note. But even more suspicious: the record of his life’s environmental achievement, his magnum opus, has gone missing. Troubled, Meg calls in amateur sleuths George and Molly Palmer-Jones to investigate.

In North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father's funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, he lost his family, too. Now he's back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region; a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose.

Marilyn Howe and her mother Kathleen are an inseparable duo, until one night Kathleen doesn’t come home . . .Fifteen-year-old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting strange. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs. Howe has disappeared once more.

Wild Fire is the eighth and final book in the Shetland series from Ann Cleeves, the number one bestselling author and creator of Vera and the Two Rivers. Rumours of an affair surround a woman found hanged – on the most troubling case of his career, Inspector Jimmy Perez must work with Willow Reeves once again, and she has news that will change his life forever.

When a violent storm descends upon Orkney, the body of Archie Stout is left behind in its wake. An unusual murder weapon, a Neolithic stone bearing ancient inscriptions, is found discarded nearby. Archie was a popular, larger-than-life character, making his death a shocking blow to the community.

As the snow falls in Newcastle, Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter, Jessie, travel home on the busy Metro. When the train stops unexpectedly due to bad weather, Jessie notices that one woman doesn’t leave, and when trying to wake her they find that the passenger has been fatally stabbed. With no witnesses DI Vera Stanhope looks into the victim’s past and discovers she lived for years on Harbour Street, in a run-down Northumberland fishing town.

Isolated farmer Ernie Bowles was found lying on his kitchen floor, gruesomely strangled. News of the murder came to Inspector Stephen Ramsay early on Monday morning and he fears this case will not be simple. In his experience, most murders are straightforward: an explosion of family pressure, the loss of control in a fight. But Bowles seems to have kept himself to himself and had lived alone since his mother’s death. A seemingly unconnected women is then found strangled too, surely two such killings in the same locality are more than just chilling coincidence?