Wild Fire (Shetland, 8)

Product Information

We see how bitterness and an unsatisfactory life can affect a person and the trouble this person can cause to himself and to others! How did you find the experience of seeing your series adapted for television? Was there a particular story that you loved seeing come to life on screen? The prose is intricate and deft. The characters are flawed, complex and intriguing. And the plot is a compelling, well crafted, police procedural full of suspects, clues, deduction, jealousy, obsession, manipulation, swirling emotions, secrets, familial drama, and murder. One of the most successful book series that Ann Cleeves has written are the Inspector Ramsey books. This six part series was released throughout the 1990s and is now become so successful that copies of the books have become collector’s items. This series is a perfect example of how Ann’s surroundings affected her work as they are set mainly in her then home, Northumberland. Why did you decide to set the series in the Shetland Isles, and what do you think is the appeal of crime stories set in close-knit communities?

When the young nanny is murdered, Jimmy Perez and his boss, Willow Reeves, are the detectives called in to find her killer. Featured in the seventh novel of the series, Cold Earth, Jimmy and Willow have an unresolved relationship. This makes it harder for them to work together, but they manage to overcome their personal problems and eventually discover who committed the murder, though not before more crimes are committed and some unpleasant events from the past surface to shed light on possible motivations.Families falling apart because of every day problems they don't know how to handle and how easy it is for a person to sneak in and mess with them and also how self centred people may force others to take actions to lead up even to murder! But also how people can overcome problems and stand up to the challenges thrown at them! In true murder mystery style Cleeves gives out just enough information to have the reader believing anyone could have and had cause to murder the victims.

This murder will bring, Jimmy, Willow and Sandy together for one final outing. A case with many strings, threads leading to a hidden and past life, a young boy on the autism spectrum, a husband and father, and a woman with a secret who cannot forgive nor forget. Sometimes people are just not who you think they are. The clues are there, in retrospect, but admit to missing them. The case is suspenseful enough, but the atmosphere of the island, and the characters have for me, always been the draw for me. Although I admit I liked done of the books in this series, better than others, it has never disappointed me. Wild Fire is a terrifically readable and satisfying crime novel. All that's left for Cleeves to do is give Perez the ending he deserves, too. And she does.The Flemings have recently moved to the island and their arrival has upset the locals. The prior owner hung himself in the byre and for some reason, they are blamed. I loved Cleve’s points about the herd mentality and how gossip spreads through the island like wildfire. Then, a nanny for another family is found hanged in the same byre. Wild Fire" is yet another excellent read from Ann Cleeves. Almost as intriguing is the reference at the end to the young women on the ferry. Those who know her history can't help but suspect the character is Ann herself in an homage to a place so special to her. Most intriguing of all the is the subtle Easter egg at the end. We shall just have to wait.

Another novel from this series is The Baby Snatcher. This was published in 1997 and is the last book in the Inspector Ramsey series. As any writer, Ann’s work continues to grow meaning that The Baby Snatcher is just as thrilling, if not more than the earlier work in the series. This book is about Inspector Ramsey’s interactions with a young girl named Marilyn Howe. When she appears on his doorstep acting distressed and claiming that her mother has gone missing, he kindly invites her in.The saying goes, “you write what you know” and at this point in her life, Ann knew the area very well. However, it was always Ann and her husbands dream to eventually settle in the Northeast and in 2006, they finally did. Both her daughters are now happily married to men from Newcastle, England. Books by Ann Cleeves I am extremely sad that we will no longer be able to read about DI Jimmy Perez's adventures, and although I thoroughly enjoyed the journey towards the conclusion, I found myself deflated by the resolution. I feel it is very important to produce a spectacular climax to a novel, but especally when it is the last book in a fantastic series. I know I will miss Perez as will many other readers. I felt there was much more to come from him, and his story didn't feel like it had come to an end. All in all, exactly what we have to come to expect from Cleeves: a wonderful setting, a thrilling story, exceptionally drawn characters and atmosphere. No one evokes the landscape better! Goodbye Jimmy, you'll be a miss!

Ann Cleeves’ final Shetland novel is a masterpiece of tangled family threads and crime smoke and mirrors. The rural setting, with its fishbowl community life, is a perfect place to demonstrate how nobody knows much about anyone at all, not even within their own families. Cleeves does a fine job of showcasing the Shetland landscape, mixing real locations with slightly more fictional ones. Whether it's taking photos of otters, or stopping off at Frankie's for fish and chips, the islands feel very real without distracting from the story. Many readers will be sad to see the end of DI Jimmy Perez and the Shetland series but I am happy to say I still have seven more books in the series to read and I’m eagerly looking forward to them. I watch the TV show like any other viewer. Sometimes I'm shown the scripts or the DVDs in advance and I love going along to the read-throughs to meet the stars and the guest actors, but really I like coming fresh to the finished drama. The books and the shows are very different formats. I've been very fortunate though. The writers and directors and the actors have captured the essence of the books and the characters, even though they change the details of plot. The story that I loved most was one of the original stories, not an adaptation of the novels. It was series three, the first six-parter. It explores the sexual assault of one of the main characters, and is very sensitively written by Gaby Chiappe and beautifully acted by Dougie Henshall and Alison O'Donnell. All seven series of the award-winning television drama, inspired by - but very different to - Ann Cleeves's Shetland mysteries, and starring Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez, are now available on DVD. US viewers can also watch it on BritBox or with Prime Video.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

An English family, drawn in by the beauty of the islands, move to the area, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn of their home, rumours of her affair with the husband begin to spread like wild fire. DI Jimmy Perez, called in to investigate, knows that it will mean the return to the islands of his on-off lover and boss Willow Reeves... Slow to start, with some characters that seemed to me to be familiar from earlier books in the series, not intentionally, but just as “types” we have seen before. For me, these characters did not come alive as individuals as much as in earlier novels in the series, in particular four of the adult characters: the Flemings and the Moncrieffs. These are all caricatures straight out of Midsomer Murders. Perez’s ward Cassie seems to have become a bit of a burden for the author, and almost a victim of neglect by Perez.