A review by deeclancy
Thin Air by Ann Cleeves
4.0
Although I have read only one other book in the Shetland series, and this is the sixth installment, this book reads well as a discrete entity, telling you all you need to know about Perez and any other regularly occurring characters. It relates to a group of professional thirty-somethings from London attending the wedding of two friends to one another in the Shetlands, and the untimely death of one of the friends, the femme fatale of the group, Eleanor.
To avoid plot spoilers, suffice to say that the book has everything you'd really want in a murder mystery, and more. There is an array of fairly complex and complicated characters, and the ins and outs of an island community and its intricate family histories are drawn with expertise. I found it difficult to keep track of some of the Shetland place names, and at times, found the topographical and geographical descriptions a little longer and more frequent than I would have liked. However, the latter reservation is most probably due to personal taste in detective fiction, and there may be people who would be irritated by scanty descriptions of a landscape that is known for its uniqueness. Personally, I prefer to look at photos to get a picture in my head of a landscape, rather than read descriptions.
At the end of the day, though, this is a page-turner, with many twists and turns in the plot that kept me reading well into the wee hours of the morning.
To avoid plot spoilers, suffice to say that the book has everything you'd really want in a murder mystery, and more. There is an array of fairly complex and complicated characters, and the ins and outs of an island community and its intricate family histories are drawn with expertise. I found it difficult to keep track of some of the Shetland place names, and at times, found the topographical and geographical descriptions a little longer and more frequent than I would have liked. However, the latter reservation is most probably due to personal taste in detective fiction, and there may be people who would be irritated by scanty descriptions of a landscape that is known for its uniqueness. Personally, I prefer to look at photos to get a picture in my head of a landscape, rather than read descriptions.
At the end of the day, though, this is a page-turner, with many twists and turns in the plot that kept me reading well into the wee hours of the morning.