Ann Cleeves with Colin Dexter at the London launch of White Nights.
White Nights
White Nights, Ann Cleeves' sequel to her award-winning Raven Black, has now been published in the UK. White Nights is the second book in Ann's much-praised Shetland Quartet, and where Raven Black explored the islands in the dark days of a snowy winter, White Nights flips the coin to show how the unending summer daylight distorts the emotions of islanders and visitors alike.
Ann has been persuaded to drop a few hints about the story, which again features Jimmy Perez. She says:
The launch of an exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a stranger who bursts into tears, then claims not to remember who he is or where he comes from. The next day he's found dead, wearing a clown's mask.
Set in mid-summer, the book captures the unsettling nature of a landscape where the sun never quite sets and where people are not as they first seem.
Order White Nights from Amazon (or ask your local bookshop to order a copy, quoting the ISBN: 978-0-230-01445-9).
Read a new interview about Ann Cleeves and the Shetland Quartet in The Times Online.
In true Agatha Christie style, Cleeves once again pulls the wool over our eyes with cunning and conviction
Colin Dexter
A most satisfying mystery set in an isolated and intriguing location
Peter Robinson
Read more about the Shetland Quartet.
Praise for Ann Cleeves:
"Nobody does unsettling undercurrents better than Ann Cleeves."
"Ann Cleeves deserves a lot more attention than she gets. Her plots are beautifully crafted; her characters are intense and deeply drawn."
Toronto Globe and Mail
"Perceptive, convincing and quietly compelling."
Marcel Berlins, The Times
The Sleeping and the Dead
Ann Cleeves' vivid novel of psychological suspense, The Sleeping and the Dead, was first published in the UK in 2001. It has been selected for reissue by Bloody Brits Press, an imprint dedicated to introducing the best of British crime fiction to the US market, and the new edition was published on December 30th 2007.
Read more about The Sleeping and the Dead
Hidden Depths: new editions
A hot summer on the Northumberland coast, and Julie Armstrong arrives home from a night out to find her son murdered. Luke has been strangled, laid out in a bath of water and covered with wild flowers...
Hidden Depths, like Ann's other books, is grounded in the accurate details of police practice: her friend Helen Pepper is a former Crime Scene Investigator. Helen told the launch party how she would have handled the bodies found in Hidden Depths, admitted that there had been a true incident which inspired some of the difficulties faced by Vera Stanhope in this latest investigation - read an article about this in Newcastle's Sunday Sun, or listen to an interview they recorded for BBC Woman's Hour on Monday 5th February, talking about Hidden Depths, what Helen contibutes to Ann's books, twitchers and what a body looks like when it has been buried in peat for years (but not centuries): the interview is still available to Listen Again.
Ann and Helen also frequently team up to offer lively speaking sessions, and even host Murder in the Library sessions: see the Events page to find out where they will be appearing next.
Ann's newest book, Hidden Depths, is now available in paperback, in audio and in large print editions.
Read more about the Vera Stanhope books.
Read Ann's author page on her publisher's web site (with links to an interview with Ann, and an extract from Hidden Depths.
"A riveting read. Ann Cleeves probes beneath the surface of a community to reveal the darkness that can fester when everyone thinks they know each other's secrets"
Val McDermid
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Last update: 23rd April 2008.