Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [137]
Barry Forshaw
‘On an island shrouded in mist, amid a community with secrets, a visiting archaeologist uncovers mysterious human remains . . . This award-winning writer weaves an intriguing, chilling web’
Best Magazine
WHITE NIGHTS
‘Decades-old amorous betrayals resurface in a plot that makes much of the tension between incomers and islanders. Ann Cleeves’ intriguing mystery is tangentially energized by the “simmer dim”’
Financial Times
‘Cleeves deftly paints in the personalities and their relationships, as the police inquiries disrupt the close-knit community. It’s a good, character-led mystery, which displays the art of storytelling without recourse to slash and grab’
Sunday Telegraph
‘This is wonderful . . . Part of the wonder of this book is the domestic detail that becomes iconic within the novel . . . This is a very good author. This is an author that bears criticism’
Radio Four’s ‘Front Row’
RAVEN BLACK
‘Raven Black breaks the conventional mould of British crime-writing, while retaining the traditional virtues of strong narrative and careful plotting’
Independent
‘Beautifully constructed . . . a lively and surprising addition to a genre that once seemed moribund’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Raven Black shows what a fine writer Cleeves is . . . an accomplished and thoughtful book’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Ann’s characterization is worthy of the best writers in the field . . . Rarely has a sense of place been so evocatively conveyed in a crime novel’
Daily Express
‘A fine and sinister psychological novel in the Barbara Vine style. Cleeves is part of a new generation of superior British writers who put refreshing new spins and twist on the old forms’
Globe and Mail
RED BONES
Ann Cleeves worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She now promotes reading for Kirklees Libraries and as Harrogate Crime-Writing Festival’s reader in residence, and is also a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other northern writers to promote crime fiction. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel, for Raven Black. Ann lives in North Tyneside. Red Bones is the third novel in the Shetland series following from Raven Black and White Nights. The fourth, Blue Lightning is available now.
Visit the author’s website at:
www.anncleeves.com
Also by Ann Cleeves
A Bird in the Hand
Come Death and High Water
Murder in Paradise
A Prey to Murder
A Lesson in Dying
Murder in My Backyard
A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy
Another Man’s Poison
Killjoy
The Mill on the Shore
Sea Fever
The Healers
High Island Blues
The Baby-Snatcher
The Sleeping and the Dead
Burial of Ghosts
The Vera Stanhope series
The Crow Trap
Telling Tales
Hidden Depths
The Shetland series
Raven Black
White Nights
Blue Lightning
Acknowledgements
Whalsay is a real island and one of the friendliest places I know. It doesn’t have a community called Lindby and all the people and places described there – including the camping bod where the students live – are fictitious. Symbister exists – it’s where the ferry arrives – but it doesn’t have a Pier House Hotel.
Lots of people helped with the writing of this book, but despite the collective expertise there are probably mistakes; they’re all mine. I’m grateful to Anna Williams and Helen Savage for their advice on archaeology, and to Cathy Batt and her colleagues at the University of Bradford for talking me through the Shetland excavations and showing me real red bones. Val Turner helped by reading the manuscript, putting me right on details of procedure and allowing me to use her name.
David Howarth’s excellent book The Shetland Bus provided information on the Norwegian resistance operation based in Lunna