Recent crime novels | 30 January 2010

Blue Lightning (Macmillan, £16.99) is the fourth novel in Ann Cleeves’ excellent Shetland quartet.

Blue Lightning (Macmillan, £16.99) is the fourth novel in Ann Cleeves’ excellent Shetland quartet. It is just as good as its predecessors. Cleeves has found a way to serve up many of the pleasures of the traditional mystery in an unusual modern setting. Her series detective, Jimmy Perez, returns to his own island, Fair Isle, with his artist fiancée, Fran. Autumn storms cut the island off from the rest of the world. Perez anticipated that he would suffer mild embarrassment when he introduced Fran, an outsider from the south saddled with a six-year-old daughter, to his family home. But soon he has to cope with a murder investigation as well, when a woman is found dead with feathers in her hair at the local bird observatory. And far worse is in store, for the killing hasn’t stopped.