The Moth Catcher
Life seems perfect in the quiet community of Valley Farm. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house sitter, a young ecologist, to look after the place while they're away. But his dead body is found by the side of the lane – a lonely place to die.When DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, she finds the body of a second man. What the two victims seem to have in common is a fascination with studying moths – and with catching these beautiful, intriguing creatures.The others who live in Valley Farm have secrets, too: Lorraine's calm demeanor belies a more complex personality; Annie and Sam's daughter, Lizzie, is due to be released from prison; and Nigel watches silently, every day, from his window. As Vera is drawn into the claustrophobic world of this increasingly strange community, she realizes that there may be many deadly secrets trapped there.
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The Sleeping and the Dead
A vivid psychological suspense novel. A diving instructor makes a gruesome discovery in Cranwell Lake – the body of a teenager who has clearly been in the water for many years. Detective Peter Porteous is called to the scene. After trailing through the missing persons files, he deduces that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972. As the police investigation gets under way in Cranwell, on the other side of the country prison officer Hannah Morton is about to get the shock of her life. For Michael was her boyfriend, and she was with him the night he disappeared. The news report that a body has been found brings back dreaded and long buried memories from her past…
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The Sleeping and the Dead
A vivid psychological suspense novel. A diving instructor makes a gruesome discovery in Cranwell Lake – the body of a teenager who has clearly been in the water for many years. Detective Peter Porteous is called to the scene. After trailing through the missing persons files, he deduces that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972. As the police investigation gets under way in Cranwell, on the other side of the country prison officer Hannah Morton is about to get the shock of her life. For Michael was her boyfriend, and she was with him the night he disappeared. The news report that a body has been found brings back dreaded and long buried memories from her past…
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Thin Air
Thin Air is the sixth book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series – now a major BBC One drama starring Douglas Henshall as detective Jimmy Perez, Shetland. A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Unst, Shetland's most northerly island, to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears – apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It appears to be a suicide note, saying she'll never be found alive. And then Eleanor's body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge. Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to Unst to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the ghost had seemed unhealthy – obsessive, even – to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor's death than they first thought. Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill – many years later – to protect? Ann Cleeves' striking Shetland novel explores the tensions between tradition and modernity that lie deep at the heart of a community, and how events from the past can have devastating effects on the present. Also available in the Shetland series are Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, Blue Lightning and Dead Water.
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Too Good to Be True
An interesting quick novella of about 100 pages.Jimmy Perez, detective, receives a request from his ex-wife, Sarah. She asks him to leave his base on Shetland Island, and privately investigate a personal case which is making her distraught.Sarah has married a doctor in a small village on the mainland of Scotland. A young unmarried school teacher has been found dead, and the local police have concluded she committed suicide. Local gossipsare spreading the word that Sarah's husband was having an affair with the teacher and may have murdered her.Perez doesn't want to be away from his regular job and daughter for more than two days. He walks around the village questioning various people and neatly solves the case within that time.
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White Nights
Its mid-summer in Shetland, the time of the white nights, when birds sing at midnight and the sun never sets. Artist Bella Sinclair throws a party to launch an exhibition of her work and to introduce the paintings of Fran Hunter. The Herring House, the gallery where the exhibition is held, is on the beach at Biddista, in the remote north west of the island. When a mysterious Englishman bursts into tears and claims not to know who he is or where hes come from, the evening ends in farce. The following day the Englishman is found hanging from a rafter in a boathouse on the jetty, a clowns mask on his face. Detective Jimmy Perez is convinced that this is a local murder. He is reinforced in this belief when Roddy, Bellas musician nephew is murdered too. But the detectives relationship with Fran Hunter clouds his judgement. And this is a crazy time of the year when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems.
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