Ann Cleeves is the author of the crime novels which inspired TV's DCI Vera Stanhope series and the Shetland series featuring Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez.
You don't need to know the back story of Jimmy Perez to enjoy this short novella, but fans of Shetland will surely feel right at home as he travels to the small town of Stonebridge on the Scottish border, at the request of his ex-wife Sarah.
A young schoolteacher named Anna has been found dead - a wine glass and a handful of antidepressants makes it look like suicide, but Sarah is not sure. Would Anna have abandoned her young daughter? Sarah's new husband is the local doctor, Tom King and the persistent town gossip is they were having an affair. If Jimmy can find out what really happened, they might be left in peace. Jimmy learns that after Sarah and the parent board selected the new teacher, she tried to ban Anna from the school for incompetence and turned the town against her. An affair with her husband seems the logical reason. Jimmy can stay only two days, and after contacting an old friend with Police Scotland, he turns up a lot of dirty secrets just talking with the locals. Anna's best friend Gail was watching her daughter the night she died, and seems very open, corroborating the pressure Anna felt from the town.
If Tom and Sarah didn't kill her, they drove her to suicide.
As a fan of Shetland, Jimmy Perez, and Ann Cleeves I really enjoyed this.
Everything was there - a Detective Inspector I admire, village gossip, adultery, suicide/murder, and a nest of secrets. There was even a dark, rainy night where Perez was almost run down on the side of the road by a murderous driver. All within just two days. This had everything you would want in a crime novel, yet it is to the power of a solid writer that it has been economically pared down to a novella.
My only complaint was that this new Perez mystery was over so soon.
2016 / Tradeback / 112 pages
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