Rambling About.... Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

 

Title: Raven Black

Author: Ann Cleeves

Publication: 24 June 2008

Format: Kindle eBook

Amazon Description

Raven Black begins on New Year's Eve with a lonely outcast named Magnus Tait, who stays home waiting for visitors who never come. But the next morning the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I've been meaning to read Ann Cleeves for a while now. BritBox is one of my favorite streaming services and there are several shows based on her books and the one that I keep wanting to watch most (because Douglas Henshall has had me since Primeval) is Shetland. I know that changes have been made with the adaptation, but I also know that Cleeves is a fan of the show and the changes so I'm still going to give it a shot ... after I read at least the first couple of books in the series. When I saw that this one started on New Year's Eve it was like a sign that I needed to stop delaying and at least get it started in time for this week's Book Beginnings & Friday 56. 

I did more than start it ... I finished it in all of its wonderful glory and a lot sooner than expected so we get a random rambling post today and the Book Beginnings & Friday 56 will be ........ something else.

This is one of those books where even the locale is a character. Of course, that would be Shetland:

In Shetland, when there was no wind it was shocking. People strained their ears and wondered what was missing. 

It's the actual characters, though, that really drew me in from the beginning starting with poor Magnus Tait. Magnus is an older man -- lonely, secluded, and quite probably autistic. We open with him waiting for potential visitors for New Year's even though he hasn't had any in eight years. He was alone aside from his pet raven until two teenage girls surprise him and visit -- Sally Henry and Catherine Ross. 

Not long after, Catherine Ross is found dead and since Magnus was one of the last people who saw her alive, he is immediately suspected -- just as he was eight years ago when eleven year old Catriona Bruce went missing. After all, people fear what they can't understand and not many people ever tried to understand Magnus. Luckily for Magnus, D.I Jimmy Perez is working the investigation and is not quite as convinced as everyone else seems to be.

Perez didn't know if Magnus was a murdered or not. It was too early to say. But the assumption of his colleagues that Tait had killed the girl annoyed him. It was a challenge to his professionalism. It was the sloppy thinking, the laziness which irritated him.... Perez hoped that the team from Inverness would come with open minds. He planned to get at them before they were infected by the Shetland gossip and the locals' distrust of an old man who'd become an outsider.

(Side Note: Perez, the main character of the series, is probably the biggest change I know of between the book and the still-unseen TV show. I'll just keep picturing him as Henshall because that makes my brain happy.)

It all takes place in a small community where pretty much everyone knows everyone ... and yet everyone seems to have secrets so no one really knows much. Or perhaps they do. It's told from the viewpoint of several characters so the reader knows more than most of the players, of course, but even then there are twists and turns and many of them far more twisted than expected. 

I'm definitely a fan and will absolutely be continuing the series and, I would imagine, more of Cleeves. After all, there are at least two others to binge on BritBox besides Shetland.