Raven Black Book One of the Shetland Island Quartet

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves and Gordon Griffin (narrator) is the first mystery in the Shetland Island series. It's also the inspiration for parts of the first series of Shetland ("Red Bones") and the first mystery of series two ("Raven Black"). I saw these first two mysteries on Shetland a couple years ago and decided to read the mystery series. I recall Shetland being rather confusing in parts and now having read Raven Black I can see it's because a central artistic theme was stripped from it and applied to "Red Bones." This theme is fire and ice, taken from the Robert Frost poem. By stripping the fire of Up Helly Aa and slapping it onto an entire different mystery, destroys the narrative flow of both mysteries.

didn’t like the end, but the start was so good, v creeped out

Just finished this first book in the Shetland series and I loved it. I love the Vera series but had no idea that Ann Cleeves is not only the author of those books but of this series as well. I am very grateful I found out because I loved the writing and the mystery, it kept me guessing til the very end.

August 2021, a re-read for our Mystery Book Club. I listened to the audio this time. I still like the book. ____________________________ I was trying to finish a big knitting project and I needed something to occupy my mind as well as my fingers. I started watching "Shetland" (BBC mystery series), and was utterly captivated. I saw the series was based on books by Ann Cleeves. When I saw that Scribd had one (just one!), I figured I'd give it a read. It's an easy read. 8 years ago, a young girl went missing. In present day, another girl, a teenager, is killed. Are these two deaths related? Is the obvious suspect actually the killer? Turn the pages to find out! I read it in 24 hours. I was kinda fascinated by the differences between the series and the book. I know screen adaptations have to make changes. The TV adaptation hewed pretty close to the novel here (no spoilers), but there are different relationships, people are described as looking different than they look in the series, and some characters are shifted and/or missing. Maybe because I saw the series first, I like it a little better. But I'd read another Ann Cleeves/Shetland novel. Bonus for the TV and the book: I was interested enough to look up Shetland and read up on it. I've been a fan of Shetland fiddle music and Shetland wool/knitting for decades. It was pretty neat to learn more about the islands because of a TV series/novel.

Stellenweise etwas zäh, Perez blieb sehr farblos, dafür ist Magnus gut gelungen

Entertaining enough. I may have ruined it by watching the series first (though I missed this episode somehow.)