ANN CLEEVES' PAGE: Jimmy Perez/Shetland series 5 through 8...reposting old reviews

DEAD WATER
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Ann Cleeves returns to her critically acclaimed Shetland Island series with this stunning mystery featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, who readers will remember from Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning. When the body of a journalist is found, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted from outside to head up the investigation. Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his local knowledge is needed in this case, and he decides to help Willow. The dead journalist had left the islands years before to pursue his writing career. In his wake, he left a scandal involving a young girl. When Willow and Jimmy dig deeper, they realize that the journalist was chasing a story that many Shetlanders didn't want to come to the surface. In Dead Water, a triumphant continuation to her Shetland series, Ann Cleeves cements her place as one of Britain's most successful crime writers.

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My Review: Cleeves' trademark simplicity of language, her amazing gift for limning a character in a sentence and a setting, her painterly use of color and composition to make the story richer: All present, all accounted for. And it's not one single bit of a surprise that British television pounced on these tales. May they have the monster (comparatively) success that Cleeves' other sleuth-series, Vera, has had.

Originally the books were to be a quartet, which I think we all know means four of something. Here we are on the *fifth* book in the quartet...and a cynical little part of me (known as "the whole body and soul") thinks this fifth entry was inspired by the TV show's existence. I feel it shows in the too-muchness of everything in the story. Too much angst, and from more than only Jimmy the widower. The secondary cast is all angst-ridden, frustrated, scared of something happening, something not happening, something coming out to embarrass them. This gets wearing. In the extreme. It took three days for me to read a book whose predecessors were devoured in hours.

One big surprise is the role of the Fiscal, previously a testy martinet. A new light is shone on her character and a resolution is crafted for her that I myownself felt was too sympathetic. The resolution of the mystery, in fact, seems too sympathetic, and the guilty are, well, sprung on us in a feat-of-detection solution to the logic puzzle that all mysteries are. This isn't my favorite of the series, but I can't deny myself the pleasures of reading even an oversized undermysteried Ann Cleeves novel.:

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THIN AIR
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland's most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears—apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It reads like a suicide note, saying she'll never be found alive. And then Eleanor's body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.

Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the legend of the ghost had seemed unhealthy - obsessive, even—to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor's death than there first appears.

Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill—many years later—to protect?

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My Review: Series mysteries are a pleasure to me. I have a (well-concealed) orderly side, one that needs to see Right done even if it's not strictly speaking legal. The Right that's done here is a bit twisty, no doubt about that, but it satisfied me. Eleanor, the murder victim, is the sort of character that just needs killing. I've known Eleanors in my life and feel that way about each of them, though I hasten to say loudly and publicly that I don't condone murder as a means to make things Right.

Really. Honest.

But Jimmy Perez is a cop, a good cop, and even though it seemed to me that he secretly felt that Right was done in Eleanor's death, he set out to solve the crime that was committed in the course of setting things straight. Willow, the new Chief Inspector we met in the previous book, is a great character. She's just awkward enough to make Jimmy feel off-balance yet protective. He's still reeling from his love's death; he's still growing accustomed to being a single dad; he's got Sandy the PC Plod character making him crazy yet advancing in his own detecting capabilities under Jimmy's tutelage. Jimmy's a man with a lot on his plate. Eleanor wouldn't be someone he'd care much for in life and I suspect he'd simply do the minimum were it not for the cast of Shetland originals wrapped deep in the case's toils.

The series brings a delightful place on Earth's surface to light. (Pun optional.) As we follow Jimmy, Willow, and Sandy around in their investigations, the Shetlands feel like so much more than the land that holds the characters up as they walk around. The islands are palpable to me, as though looking out the window while I'm reading about Unst will show me Unst instead of Long Beach. That's a great feeling to have when reading a book about a place I've never been.

The BBC has a series based on the characters in the novels. It's had three seasons to date and a fourth will be produced. It's recently become available on Netflix so I suppose I'll binge it one day soon. I was completely enthralled by Ann Cleeves' other series, Vera Stanhope, in its ITV incarnation, and Brenda Blethyn is my idea of Vera. The seventh season is due next year, 2017, and I will be there for it with bells on. I've been more cautious in approaching the adaptation of this series because Jimmy is portrayed by actor Douglas Henshall, very much not the man I see in my mental movie of the series. A bit like Peter Capaldi as the Doctor...just about exactly wrong from my viewpoint.

Still and all, it pays to remain open. While Cleeves' first four Shetland novels were made into the first two seasons of Shetland, the third season has branched out on its own. That should make the cognitive disconnect of Henshall as Jimmy Perez a good deal easier for me to absorb. The books are a pleasure, there is a seventh full novel (after several novellas) appearing next year; the TV series bids fair to be worthy of attention; it's a good investment of your eyeblinks and dollars to pick up this habit. Start anywhere, the series aspect is a boon to your pleasure but not crucial to it.

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COLD EARTH
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of four

The Publisher Says: In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the road and sweeps down to the sea.

At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and peaty water smash through a croft house in its path. Everyone thinks the croft is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. In his mind, she shares his Mediterranean ancestry and soon he becomes obsessed with tracing her identity.

Then it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit the house. Perez feels bound by duty—and something more powerful—to find out who she was, and how she died. Within the house, the only clue is a wooden box that contains two photos, one of two small children and one of an elderly couple. And a handwritten letter, which begins: "My dearest Alis..."

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EVERY SYLLABLE BELOW HERE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK
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YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

My Review: Ach, Jimmy, you need to pull up your socks and get with the program or Willow's gonna get something better equipped to provide bairns and boom-boom in Inverness! What a pity that'll be!

I'm invested in this novel series. I liked this entry just fine. I had a problem with the resolution: When Simon Shrinky-dink is the ONE AND ONLY voice even implying the the first victim was in any way unhappy, well...five alarms and red red flags, Author Cleeves! It wasn't enough to ruin my pleasure in spending time with Jimmy and Sandy and Willow, mind you. Something else almost was, though: When Andy Hay's gone off to Have A Think, it's about the least deft thing I've read Author Cleeves do! And Janeymum does not twig to her boyo's hidey-hole? No. He's got quite a lot of probletunities, does Andy. He's no mastermind to be successfully invisible to his doting mama when he's a hundred meters away.

So I twigged to the murderer right quick. I was sure the Hay family was in it, particularly once the nature of the business relationships around the community were limned in acid on the backs of my eyelids. EW! What I had built in my head wasn't the connection that came to light, though: I was sure Michael's girlfriend was employed by Rogerson and the motive was outraged revenge on Simon Shrinky-dink's part.

I'm also curious about a throwaway line that Author Cleeves gives to Mavis Rogerson about her Kathryn: "She's her father's daughter all right." Nothing at all is done with it. Nothing really led up to it, although the mother/daughter relationship appeared to me to be quite businesslike; I put it down to adult-child-back-in-nest syndrome. Might be I was only partway right....

There it is, laddies and gentlewomen. There's the reason I keep going with this series in a nutshell. Author Cleeves gives the reader so much more than she writes on the page. She puts in details that don't exactly redherringize you, but do command a fraction more of your attention than ordinary backgrounding. She doesn't fill them out. She says, in effect, "and what do you imagine will be behind this little nug of goodness?" then leaves us to it.

I get the feeling that she likes her readers and enjoys making things that fun bit extra.

So why, I hear the Parity-for-All Perfectioneers grumble, do you give this a "bad" 3-star plus rating? All those nosegays of praise and then *splat*? That's just wrong! The hell it is, Gold Star Granting Gremlins. You just take yourself off and read Red Bones or better still Raven Black! Author Cleeves is capable of nigh-unto-perfection. This book just isn't that. There's the rating explained.

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WILD FIRE
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When the Flemings—designer Helena and architect Daniel—move into a remote community in the north of Shetland, they think it's a fresh start for themselves and their children.

But their arrival triggers resentment, and Helena begins to receive small drawings of a gallows and a hanged man. Gossip spreads like wildfire.

A story of dysfunctional families and fractured relationships, Inspector Jimmy Perez's eighth case will intrigue series fans and Shetland Island newcomers alike.

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My Review: Incomers Not Wanted. Southerners, most especially, and most virulently, should not plan to stay here.

This is the message that greets London couple Helena and Daniel and their two children. The autistic son discovers the hanged body of their nanny in the barn. The same barn the original owner of their new home hanged himself.

Islands, unsurprisingly, breed insular social structures. It's right there in the word, one we've generalized to describe unwelcoming, exclusive social mlilieux for quite some time now...at least since 1775, per Etymonline. It is very seldom...I'm always reluctant to say "never" in these maters because alomg will come some "Gotcha!" Gang goofball to say "clearly you're an idiot for not knowing {thing they hunted out to embarrass you}" in their never-remotely charming way...used except pejoratively. We know it's unpleasant, unhelpful, and unkind, but nevertheless we persist in doing it.

Humans. Irredeemable, the lot of 'em.

The crimes and solutions don't really hit the ground running in this, the last book of the Shetland series. There is going to be more to come...you watch!...because of Jimmy and Willow's utterly upending news. I will say Jimmy's behavior is, unexpectedly, pretty caddish and selfish. It's very human, and fits with the series' willingness to show all the characters as people, not archetypes.

That said, I as a family member of several people far down the autism spectrum felt the autism representation...while perhaps appropriate for the broader community...fell very short in Helena's case. She demonstrated deeply hurtful attitudes...tantrums? really?...in front of her autistic child. It's not the best look for the only and last time we'll be here as readers.

The procedural parts are perfectly fine, as usual; I think Author Cleeves does a creditable job of getting the case solved without going into unnecessary mishegas, as has happened in some stories gone by. I will very much miss the Shetlands, the scoobygroup, and the lurid criminality rampant in these insular settings.

ANN CLEEVES' PAGE: Jimmy Perez/Shetland series 1 through 4...reposting old reviews

RAVEN BLACK
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

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My Review: There are two facts I must convey to you before reviewing the book. One: I am extremely uncomfortable, to the point of pain, around people with cognitive and/or communicative disorders or inabilities. Two: I was the object of my pedophile mother's sexual interest until I was fifteen.

Unsurprisingly, these aren't the sorts of themes I find enjoyable to find in my leisure reading. Raven Black has both! I was thinking seriously of abandoning the read, just quietly taking the book back to the library and forgetting it existed. Cleeves managed to make that an undesirable option, and in doing so, made it possible for me to hold a very unflattering mirror up to my character.

The younger of my two grandsons is autistic. It is extremely hard for his mother to cope with the demands of two active, intelligent, communicative children plus an active, intelligent, uncommunicative one. I don't know how she does it. I would be incapable of doing one-third what she does, with (at long last) support and help from her (second) husband.

Magnus Tait, one of our POV characters, is cognitively impaired. It was *horrible* for me to read the sections of text told from his POV because I could not bear to be in this close contact with him. It made me think of the helpless inability I feel when confronted with my autistic grandson...that sense of having nothing of myself to offer, of withdrawal from avoidable contact...no one can tell me the boy isn't aware of it, and while Magnus isn't autistic, it was a close-enough situation, and to know from the inside what chill and distance feels like...well, how awful, how awful to know it, feel it, and be unable to *understand* it.

At least I understand. But funnily enough, that fails to make it better. It makes it worse.

Pedophilia is present in several characters, no spoilers so no names, and the object of desire's POV is used in the story as well. It's unbelievable to me that Cleeves can recreate the unmixed-but-unsettled feelings of a child who holds that kind of intoxicating, terrifying, inappropriate power over an adult. I hope not, for her sake, but I felt "takes one to know one" so many times in reading certain parts of the book.

The thriller aspects of the book were nicely done, though as an old hand I pegged the murderer and motive fairly early on...but, discomfitingly, I found that I wanted the truth not to be what I knew, but what my prejudices drooled over.

I recommend this book to the unsqueamish. It's strong stuff. Nothing that happens in it is gratuitous. The guilty, and I mean those morally guilty, are punished severely. There is a bleak pleasure in that.

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WHITE NIGHTS
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The electrifying follow up to the award-winning Raven Black

Raven Black received crime fiction’s highest monetary honor, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. Now Detective Jimmy Perez is back in an electrifying sequel.

It’s midsummer in the Shetland Islands, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws an elaborate party to launch an exhibition of her work at The Herring House, a gallery on the beach.

The party ends in farce when one the guests, a mysterious Englishman, bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where he’s come from. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter, and Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that the man has been murdered. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bella’s musician nephew, is murdered, too.

But the detective’s relationship with Fran Hunter may have clouded his judgment, for this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.

A stunning second installment in the acclaimed Shetland Island Quartet, White Nights is sure to garner American raves for international sensation Ann Cleeves.

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My Review: This is the second Shetland Islands Quartet thriller, which marketing decision was a good one...calling these thrillers instead of mysteries sets up the expectation of a whacking good read though not necessarily the play-fair-with-the-reader puzzle-solver that modern mysteries are.

Cleeves writes wonderfully clearly and carefully about flawed, real, lovable characters in bad emotional states because of violent, evil acts disrupting their very ordinary lives.

The stories she tells in this series, to date, are proof to me that she's looked deeply into human nature and seen what its outlines show to the astute...there but for the grace of God go I. Everyone in this book flees from their hurts. Their flight is, inevitably, unsuccessful. Jimmy Perez can't run from his flaming co-dependence. Fran Hunter can't run from her seething ambition. Bella Sinclair can't run from her self-created persona, an Iron Maiden as effective as any Inquistor's torture device. Inspector Taylor, back up from Inverness, can't escape his fear-driven energy. No one, not any one, escapes.

The white nights of the title are a phenomenon of the far north. The sun never *quite* sets enough for true, dark night to fall. It's unsettling to some, it's a biorhythm disturber of tremendous power to have the body's million-year-old clock disrupted by absence of night. It's used by vile people the world over as a form of torture to deprive a human of good rest. And yet, there are thousands whose entire lives are lived with this condition as backdrop, and they seem not to feel its downside too strongly.

But let's face it...this fact of nature is a thriller-writer's best birthday present. What better metaphor, and even a pretty subtle one, for bringing to light old wrongs, shining the pitiless lamp of the torturer on the consciences of those guilty of undiscovered crimes, than a sun that won't go down?

That's a very nice backdrop you've chosen, Mme Cleeves, and it works very, very well for your chosen story, right up to and including the resolution of the multiple crimes. It does not make up for the sense I got, throughout the book, that your focus wasn't on me, your reader.

I recommend the book, yes. I even think there are some things about it that are outstanding, including the character developments of Perez and Taylor. But as I careened from incident to incident, I didn't sense that you were laying out this tale for my delectation, but rather leading me, like a museum docent, from exhibit to exhibit, trying in a haphazard way to lead my somewhat dim brain to a conclusion you'd already reached and were now impatiently awaiting my "aha!" moment. I am already in possession of Red Bones, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what you have planned for me next, but I am a little bit put out by this sense of magisterial disdain that I got from the resolution to White Nights. I wish you'd let me get there with you, instead of running ahead and pointing and waving your arms.

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RED BONES
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.125* of five

The Publisher Says: When a young archaeologist studying on a site at Whalsay discovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find—or a more contemporary mystery?

Then an elderly woman is shot in a tragic accident in the middle of the night. Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is called in by her grandson—his own colleague, Sandy Wilson.

The sparse landscape and the emptiness of the sea have bred a fierce and secretive people. Mima Wilson was a recluse. She had her land, her pride and her family. As Jimmy looks to the islanders for answers, he finds instead two feuding families whose envy, greed and bitterness have lasted generations.

Surrounded by people he doesn't know and in unfamiliar territory, Jimmy finds himself out of his depth. Then there's another death and, as the spring weather shrouds the island in claustrophobic mists, Jimmy must dig up old secrets to stop a new killer from striking again . . .

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My Review: This is the third in what the publishers call The Shetland Islands Quartet in some places, A Shetland Islands Thriller in others. I hope that this betokens a realization on the part of Cleeves and her publishers that the series has the essential ingredient for longevity: Terrific characters entwined in believeable relationships.

We see Jimmy Perez, our sleuth, living without gal-pal Fran Hunter while she's down south in London to visit family and friends. His every waking thought seems to return to her, to her daughter Cassie, and to the natural fears of a man in love whose lover is far away: Is she safe, is she having too good a time to want to come back, is this the end of my dream of happiness, all the stuff men think but never admit they're thinking.

Sandy, Perez's Detective Sergeant, is also away, though closer to home...he's on Whalsay, a short ferry ride from Lerwick where Jimmy is based. While visiting home, Sandy's beloved grandmother is shot. It looks like a horrible, horrible accident. Sandy is first cop on the scene, naturally, and has to make hard calls about how to pursue the matter before Jimmy shows up to take over. Sandy's family will never be the same again, of course, but more importantly for the story, Sandy won't either. Jimmy helps Sandy grow into his manhood during this investigation, and this makes the book far richer than we'd have any right to expect from a simple thriller. When a second horrible death occurs, Sandy and Jimmy both conclude there are connections here that the two of them aren't making, and whether or not the deaths were intentional, the connections need to be investigated and explored. This takes each of them farther from his comfort zone than either expected.

Cleeves's plot snake-twines around each character, squeezing the past and the present tightly together, and finally forcing the characters into one inevitable crushing future. It looks nothing like the present. It looks nothing like the future the characters saw coming. And that's why I recommend this book, and this series, with such a strong voice.

2017 UPDATE: The TV series based on the idea of the books is on Netflix in the US. Aired four years ago, and you can tell:

PEREZ: For more holiday lets? Christ Duncan you're turning into Shetland's answer to Donald Trump.

DUNCAN: *laughs*

That line spoken in Scotland today would lead to blows and severed friendships.

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BLUE LIGHTNING
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4 very very disgruntled stars of five

The Publisher Says: In the fourth book of Ann Cleeves’ critically acclaimed series set in the Shetland Islands, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez brings his fiancée home to Fair Isle, a birder’s paradise, where strangers are viewed with suspicions and distrust. When a woman's body is discovered at the island’s bird observatory, the investigation is hampered by a raging storm that renders the island totally isolated. Jimmy has to find clues the old-fashioned way, and he has to do it quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the chance to strike again.

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My Review: Jimmy and Fran go to visit Jimmy's parents, Big James and Mary, on Fair Isle, since they're planning to be married. Big James and Mary make a nice engagement party for the happy couple at the North Light, which now serves as the centerpiece of a birding reserve and research center. Maurice and Angela, who run the reserve, have attracted the best chef *ever* in the form of Jane, a lesbian escapee from life's more hectic and less forgiving pace in London. Throw in some birders, a weird subspecies of Homo obsessivus, a misery of a teenaged daughter, a snotty young upperclass Brit-twit, and some genuinely surprising revelations about the families and lives of the characters we who are fans have come to love, and then...drumroll please...kill off an extremely main character for absolutely avoidable reasons and throw the entire cast of characters into a major tumult, and you have book four of the Shetland Islands Quartet.

Oh, owww. I thought Lousy Louise Penny had hurt me as badly as a novelist could with her perfidious, horrible, and completely unforgiven emotional drubbing in book 5 of Three Pines. I suppose I should have been on the alert for a similar anguishing event because Lousy Louise herself blurbed this book. I was, however, all padded up in cotton wool, interestedly following Jimmy around his hometown Fair Isle, meeting and tutting over the characters who are slated to die; I had my murderer all picked out (I was right) and I was practically *drooling* with eagerness to see my candidate suffer, be blamed, pay for a horrible crime, a forgivable one too though honestly had the first murder gone unpunished I wouldn't've been even a little fussed about it; and then *BLAMMO* right between the eyes, *smash* went the skull with a twist I did NOT see coming; and then, and then...! Cleeves kicked me square in the teeth with the ending!!

I cried. I was very upset. I felt I'd been hurt in my real life. It takes a good, good storyteller to make that happen.

These are well-written books, and they convey a clear sense of life in the Shetland Islands. They're very much worth reading on that basis alone. But Cleeves creates characters that are deeply real, ones you can invest in, and that's the most important quality a writer can have. I strongly recommend the books. This one, obviously, should be saved for last; I suspect, though, given the last few lines of the book, that Cleeves's publishers have prevailed upon her to make the Quartet more open-ended. I am not at all sure I think that's a good thing, if it's true. Still, I hope you will go and procure them for your reading pleasure, because it will be a pleasure.

THE INISHOWEN MYSTERIES, book four of the four to date starring Ben O'Keeffe: MURDER AT GREYSBRIDGE

MURDER AT GREYSBRIDGE
ANDREA CARTER (Inishowen Mysteries #4)
Oceanview Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.95 Kindle edition, available 2 November 2021

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Perfect for fans of character driven mysteries with a powerful sense of place — Being adapted for a television crime series

Summer has arrived in Inishowen and solicitor Ben O'Keeffe is greatly tempted by a job offer she's received from a law firm in America.

Yet before making any life-changing decisions there is her friend Leah's wedding to attend at the newly restored Greysbridge Hotel, with its private beach and beautiful pier. It's the perfect location, everyone agrees, but the festivities are brutally cut short when a young American, a visitor also staying at the hotel, drowns in full view of the wedding guests.

And when a second death is discovered the same evening, Ben finds herself embroiled in a real country house murder mystery, where all the guests are suspects . . .

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fourth in the series is a dangerous passage for a writer. The temptation is to let things get samey, or to overcomplicate things; seldom does one find the writer whose abilities include knowing what makes a series work for the long haul. I think we might have a winner in Author Andrea Carter.

Ben O'Keeffe is glad that Leah, her assistant, will have the very first wedding at Greysbridge. It's a fine old landed-gentry house that Abby and Ian Grey have brought back into their family after a profligate ancestor lost in a card game! What they needed was an event, and a locally beloved soul's wedding is perfect. Until, of course, it isn't...there are disasters piling up on the day, and the deaths of two seemingly unconnected men from different countries occur in such close time and physical proximity that the Garda gets involved.

Which means Ben's ex, Tom Molloy, returns to Inishowen. Which means her casual thing developing with new-to-Glendara Harry Dubois, the new G.P., is suddenly complicated. Which means that Ben's nosy neighbors will quickly be weighing in on which path she should choose...Phyllis the bookstore owner (who's also now a Reverend of some sect or another) and Iain the estate agent aren't likely not to share their ideas with her. Not to mention bestie/vet Maeve. Wouldn't be at all surprised if Guinness the cat doesn't weigh in soon.

What happens next is a bolt from the blue regarding her clients, the Greys...there are more secrets than just the ones we were made privy to in the last installment! And they get...intense. Add to the ordinary parent/child tensions within the Grey family the unusual way their son came to them, then top that off with a revelation or two about their business lives...that's enough for a book, but not for this book.

While the Greys are stewing, and their adopted son running, the issues surrounding the deaths of two people who are apparent strangers to each other are coming together with the odd little island community off Malin Head and directly across the North Atlantic from Greysbridge. There are so many things swirling in the waters between the locales that it becomes a bit wearing to keep track of them. And there are threads that get dropped...Harry Dubois vanishes early and reappears in Ben's thoughts and the investigation barely often enough to keep the name from requiring a bit of flipping to recall...but in the end, his presence and involvement are such worthwhile additions to the story that I'm inclined to be forgiving.

The problems I had with this read were mostly around the pace of the story. When Author Carter put all these pieces together, I think she underestimated how complex machinery needs time to spool up and find equilibrium. In this case, that meant a lot of scene-setting that wouldn't obviously pay off until later. The time we spend following Ben and Maeve around, then Ben and Tom around, is not badly spent. You won't necessarily think that as it happens, but I encourage you to sit with the situations you're seeing and let the slow accretion of facts do their work. Remember the way you learned to solve puzzles as a kid? One piece fits with another, then another after that, and finally there's a whole new pattern at the end. This story's about the best illustration of that truth as any I've read this year.

I don't know much about the Irish relationship to the UK's corner of it, or of Ireland's interest in Scottish independence, but they're clearly coming to a head as Brexit squashes the livelihoods of people too poor to matter to the Tories. And it's not really a surprise that the primary beneficiaries of the situation will be organized criminals, is it.

The actual solutions to all the crimes are plausible, and are just going to keep the local criminal classes thoroughly on the hop, so they're working to our advantage. While these books really can be read as stand-alones, since we're given more than enough information to follow along with who's who and what's what, I don't recommend it. I skipped (inadvertently) book two, Treacherous Strand, and after the spoilers for it in book three felt there was no need to or profit in my urge to go back. We have another year to wait for book five, The Body Falls, to come out.

Why does a year sound like such a long time....

THE INISHOWEN MYSTERIES, book three of the four to date starring Ben O'Keeffe: THE WELL OF ICE

THE WELL OF ICE
ANDREA CARTER (Inishowen Mysteries #3)
Oceanview Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$11.49 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A cold—and terrifying—Christmas holiday on the Inishowen Peninsula

December in Glendara, Inishowen, and solicitor Benedicta 'Ben' O'Keeffe is working flat out before the holidays. But on a trip to Dublin to visit her parents, she runs into Luke Kirby—the man who killed her sister—freshly released from jail. On the surface he appears remorseful, conciliatory even, but his comment as she walks away makes her realise he is as foul as ever.

Back in Glendara, there is chaos. The Oak pub has burned down and Carole Kearney, the Oak's barmaid, has gone missing. And then, while walking the dog up Sliabh Sneacht, Ben and her partner, Sergeant Tom Molloy, make a gruesome discovery: a body lying face down in the snow.

Who is behind this vicious attack on Glendara and its residents? Ben tries to find answers, but is she the one in danger?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I don't know how the heck I didn't get book two of this series! I thought I had it and it wasn't until I was writing these reviews that I realized it wasn't here. Quite peeved with myself for being so careless...there are things that happened in book two, Treacherous Strand, that form the basis of the mystery in this entry. Author Carter quite competently fills me in, I'm not left wondering what the devil's up or why, but I'd've enjoyed getting here the old-fashioned way.

Don't make my mistake! But let it be said that I'm not in any way feeling deprived in my enjoyment of this book's plot, characters, or action.

The story isn't a straight-forward one: there are threads that tie things together that we aren't so much tipped to, but whose...wrongness...is a clear indicator that your inner sleuth should be engaged in this read at all times. The relationships among the good burghers of Glendara are not the uncomplicated "rural places are full of the salt of the earth charming lovely folk" types. There's adultery, but ya know what that's no biggie; there's bigamy, and that IS a biggie; then there's bastardy, and this ancient uncrime becomes the weight on the loom of Disaster's tapestry.

As is expected, too, the law-enforcement officer and the sleuth are challenged as a couple. Their own trust issues, springing from different places but with similar power, are foregrounded by every development in the several awful, violent crimes. It can't be helped. When each person is in a position of community trust, a couple is going to be hard put to fulfill their required roles at every turn—frequently starting from the internal question "what is my actual appropriate role right now?" No one can always get it right, and with all the best intentions, getting something catastrophically wrong is inevitable.

This does not in any way mean that I wasn't shouting "ARE YOU MENTAL DO NOT DO THAT" at my Kindle on multiple occasions. I honestly wanted to find the place on the map, book a flight, and go hand out some ass-chewings. Luckily for me I can tell you Author Carter really did make these places up.

While there's no story without some characters (plural) making bad decisions, the sheer obliviousness to the stakes of inaction that each and every one of them demonstrated at various times frightened me. Decisions to act in foolish ways are always easier to fix than failures to act in appropriate and timely ways. "Least said soonest mended" is NOT THE WAY FORWARD with criminals. Worrying about someone's feelings when there is a murderer in the vicinity is stupid. Blurt it out, fix it later! And even if you can't *at least they're alive*!

There are people no longer alive at the end of this book but, in the approved fashion for cozies, they are not people I myownself mind being dead. Not one little bit. Though, to be honest, the conclusion of this entry in the series does not include a vital piece of confirmation that suspicious ol' series-mystery consumer me seriously feels the lack of. The story is one of those that contains a credible motive for the resolution by discussion, but this feature could easily become a bug if it takes place every book.

What I'll delight in seeing more of is the way the community of Glendara continues to be willing and able to face down its dissension, hurts, and divisions. What I'll anticipate...not for much longer, Oceanview Publishing brings out Murder at Greysbridge on the second of November!...is learning how the huge sea-change, the La-Palma-landslide tsunami-level surprise plays out in this modern-world-problems involving series. I'm always happiest when reading books that don't cocoon the characters away from reality without reasonable care being taken to explain why they should be. I'm extra happy that Author Carter decided not to do that at all in this series.

Yes, I wish I'd read book two before this and am annoyed with myself that I carelessly failed to check the series list before starting this one. No, I'm not at all saddened by the way I was brought up to speed. And most of all, I'm so happy I got to read Andrea Carter's Inishowen series. Seek it out in paper, download a digital copy, read them in order!, but definitely read them soon.

THE INISHOWEN MYSTERIES, first of the five to date starring Ben O'Keeffe: DEATH AT WHITEWATER CHURCH

DEATH AT WHITEWATER CHURCH
ANDREA CARTER (Inishowen Mysteries #1)
Oceanview Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A missing groom—a deconsecrated church—a hidden crypt—a skeleton wrapped in a blanket

When a skeleton is discovered in the hidden crypt of a deconsecrated church, everyone is convinced the bones must be those of Conor Devitt, a local man who went missing on his wedding day six years previously. But the postmortem reveals otherwise.

Solicitor Benedicta “Ben” O’Keeffe is acting for the owners of the church, and although an unwelcome face from her past makes her reluctant to get involved, when Conor’s brother dies in strange circumstances shortly after coming to see her, she finds herself drawn in to the mystery. Whose is the skeleton in the crypt and how did it get there? Is Conor Devitt still alive, and if so, is there a link? What happened on the morning of his wedding to make him disappear?

Negotiating between the official investigation—headed up by the handsome but surly Sergeant Tom Molloy—and obstructive locals with secrets of their own, Ben unravels layers of personal and political history to get to the truth of what happened six years before.

TELEVISION ADAPTATION ON THE WAY!

Death at Whitewater Church is the first in a series of Ben O’Keeffe mysteries set on the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal, Ireland.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A terrific series-starting book, also an excellent publishing debut. Author Carter is a talented writer and was well-served in her editor. The flourishes rhetorical were agreeable:

Being an outsider in a town where most people have spent their whole lives is not the easiest way to live. Sometimes, in my darker moments, I felt as if my role here was limited to that of an observer and facilitator for other people. That my own life was a sort of half-life, as if I didn’t really count because no one knew my “people.” But I have my reasons for being here.

Pretty, also useful, also informative. A good writer takes that kind of direction from a good editor..."make the infodump into a confession!" resounds to a truly wickedly attuned writer like Author Carter is.

There are many twists and turns in Ben's trip through Whitewater's past. Her beautiful world of small-town solicitor worries, conveyances and wills and the like, is completely upended by the toothy rocks she's clung to while getting herself out of the North Atlantic after one of her truly daft February swims. Her local knowledge makes the stakes of learning her new community's older secrets all the more poignant and relevant.

I'll offer a mild criticism here: There is very little sense of the Love Interest's appeal. He's a blank canvas with some sketch-lines showing what he can possibly be. Even the moments that are the most intimate between Ben and Tom, before the fire and after the wine, aren't so much said as reported in the past tense.

It's a minor whinge. It niggled slightly and I noticed it, so I bring it up. But the *important* bit is the crimes that were and are committed in this small town. It's quite the surprise as to who's been bad and why. I found the resolution quite unimpeachably witnessed and for reasons I was completely sure were logical. The resolution fit the facts, and the way it's told to us is well within my suspension of disbelief.

Bravo, Author Carter, for making this series-starting novel a career-starting one as well.

UNDER THE DOME, Stephen King Book & TV Review Posted 25 June 2013

UNDER THE DOME
STEPHEN KING
Scribner
$10.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

My Review: Chester's Mills, Maine, is having itself an ordinary morning, and its citizens are gettin' up to all the usual things: Spending too much of their husband's money, killing girls, beating up people they don't like and driving them out of town, making evil brews, only thing missing really is a bonfire and a faggot. Business as usual for the human race, in other words.

*WHAM*

Down comes the Dome.

No way in, no way out, no one can understand the nature, the origin, or the purpose of the Dome inside or outside of it. National security issues crop up. The town misfit, an Iraqi war vet, is called back into national service to solve the mystery. And then things get **really** ugly: The local used car salesman takes control.

Think Nixon with a mean streak and a Big Fat Secret to protect.

"From Bad to Worse" could be the subtitle of every Stephen King novel, but this time it's so so so so bad and then it gets so so so much worse that the reader is calling out to Divine Providence for the mercy of Death...and then comes The Twist. The Dome is revealed to be...but no, you have to read it. Because Stephen King = what Chuckles the Dick would've been if he'd had talent.

Just sayin'.

I hated liking this book. I resented the demands on my gouty wrists and fingers, supporting its mammoth weight, flipping the pages faster and faster and faster as I got more and more sucked in to the story. I snorted snobbily at myself, caught up in this not-terribly-sophisticated narrative. None of which stopped me finishing the book and sighing with mitigated contentment at its sudsy, gloriously cinematically trajectory. I can see the miniseries...I want to see the miniseries! soon please!...unfold in my mind. It's what Stephen King does brilliantly: Tells you a story of human nature, irrefutably making points that need making about Mankind and its flaws, while wringing your withers with fear, excitement, and sadness.

The Dome was a really cool narrative device. I liked its unknowability, I was completely on board with mystery forces causing it who-knows-why...and then we find out why. I wasn't especially interested in that part, and felt it was a tidge unimaginitive coming from Mr. Shock-and-Awe himself.

Eh...so what...I had over 1000pp of reading pleasure. It's like potato-chip sex. The kind you have because you can. It still feels good, and no way are you gonna stop just because it's meaningless.

(I suppose this last isn't comprehensible to my girly readers of either gender.)

Relax. Enjoy. Don't think too much. You'll end up in a much better mood than you started out in.

UNLESS, of course, you watch the TV series that King himself participated in...from a premiere of over 13 million viewers to a finale of just under 5 million in three short seasons!

It had very pretty actors, and it had some terrific episodes, but it was plagued by a series of changes made to the storyline for no obvious reason. Fans of the book were, understandably and predictably, pissed. So why do the creatives insist on doing this? They weren't even changes made to ease filming or reduce cast! (The cast was staggeringly large.)

King himself addressed the irritated fans from his website, speaking ex cathedra:

Many of the changes wrought by Brian K. Vaughan and his team of writers have been of necessity, and I approved of them wholeheartedly. Some have been occasioned by their plan to keep the dome in place over Chester's Mill for months instead of little more than a week, as is the case in the book. Other story modifications are slotting into place because the writers have completely reimagined the source of the dome.

Sadly, they did not respond positively, and took their toys home in a snit. I'm not sure they were right, to be honest, and found the series more than entertaining enough to keep me watching from season one through the finale.

But I'm not one of the gatekeeping fanboys in any fandom. I find those sorts of people tiresomely similar to religious nuts in their insistence of Being Right. And I ain't down with that.