Dead Water: A Shetland Mystery (Shetland Island Mysteries)
*Starred Review* In the sixth of Cleeves’ Shetland Island series starring Inspector Jimmy Perez, a very controlled Scottish public prosecutor who seems passionate only about team-rowing, makes a discovery that threatens to tumble the Jenga-like structure of her life. The prosecutor, Rhona Laing, retrieves an unmoored boat and finds the body of a man seemingly placed across the seats, a briefcase next to the body. The dead man is a former local journalist who made good in London. The question facing Perez (who is inching his way back to work after the trauma of his fiancée’s death) and Willow Reeves, a detective inspector from the Inverness Serious Crime Squad sent to head the investigation, is what made the journalist a target? The answer has repercussions for the main characters, the tiny island of Aith, and for Scotland as a whole. Cleeves has an unusually deft hand with characters; not one of them seems purely plot-functional, and Perez’s character keeps deepening with each book. The rough islands cresting the Atlantic fit the bleakness of the murders depicted here. This series is one of two that Cleeves has going; the other stars Northumberland detective Vera Stanhope and is a hit BBC series. --Connie Fletcher