Red Bones: A Thriller (Shetland Book 3)

Red Bones is a fabulous book of intricate characters each with their own secrets and you have no idea who the actual culprit is. Thea story is finely lined by how the story weaves together till the end. AMN Cleeves is becoming a favorite of mine

Interesting story about Shetland and other islands and the people who settled there and how they make a living and come from historical events.

Inspector Jimmy Perez just can’t accept the suspicious deaths that have happened one after another on the island of Whalsay in the Shetlands. First an eccentric old woman is shot accidentally by a drunken local out shooting rabbits at night. Then a promising young woman anthropologist is found dead in her dig with her wrists slit.While Perez investigates, he turns up more than one unpleasant secret — including murders that go back decades and major and minor thefts. Greed, jealousy, and resentment are rampant.Perez is an admirable protagonist — brilliant at low-key interrogation, silent when he has nothing to say, and encouraging to the local police officer he’s helping to gain confidence in the job. And it’s charming how intensely Perez wants to marry his artist lover — and how very afraid he is to ask her!Parent-offspring relations loom large in the plot. And an intricate plot it is, with many threads coming slowly together in a pattern, rather like Fair Island knitting.

I've just finished Red Bones. liked the first two so much I bought the rest of the series. Also I'm enjoying watching Shetland on Prime Video. It's based on the same series. There are differences, but book and TV were both super.

In the Shetland Isles, some secrets stay buried for centuries. In an archaeological dig on Whalsay Island, students discover the remains of a medieval merchant's hime, along with some bones. Much to everyone's surprise, one of those bones is much more recent.At the same time, on a dark night, an old woman is shot and killed, presumably in a hunting accident. She owns the land where the dig is taking place, and noone seems to question the wuestion the circumstances of her death. But when one of the students working on the dig is found dead of what appears to be suicide, Jimmy Perez must unravel a series of secrets and lies going back to WWII, when boats and operatives were ferried to Nazi occupied Norway on the "Shetland Bus."Ann Cleeves crafts another intricate but compulsively readable mystery with Red Bones. Her characters twist and turn as much as the plot, navigating the tightly woven boundaries and networks of the island communities. There is something fascinating about a world where everyone knows one another, have ties and connections going back centuries. There are nuances and shades of conduct that imbue the story with a flavor you don't find in settings populated with strangersThis is a mystery that comes apart like a Fair Isle sweater. As Detective Perez unpicks the threads and unwinds the details, the reader becomes enmeshed in the atmosphere and settles into the big reveal with a sense of warmth and satisfaction.

Enjoyed it. Though wondering if I should take a break after three volumes, because it’s starting to feel a little formulaic. I’m sure I will read the rest of the series.

Awesome book! As always her books are well written and never ceases to amaze us with such great characters and ones you feel you know. This is the third in this series. I read the first and then I watched the entire series on BritBox and was totally hooked. So, now am finishing the actual books. I am sad that there aren’t anymore in this series. The series, I hope continues with BritBox. You will not be disappointed.

I really liked this book. Ann Cleeves is a terrific writer who has so much skill at evoking a sense of place and its living breathing atmosphere."Red Bones" is part of the Inspector Jimmy Perez series set in the Shetland Islands, where "insular" takes on definitive meaning. "Red..." opens with the shooting of a feisty old woman, the owner of a archeological site that is being excavated by a PhD student and her assistant. The killing appears to be accidental, although how it could have occurred is unclear, even to the man who has confessed to the shooting. The incident is laid to rest by the authorities despite some misgivings by Inspector Perez. Shortly thereafter, a second death occurs and Perez isn't buying the theory that it is a suicide. The mystery is slowly revealed and concluded with an intelligent spin that the author has kept up her sleeve throughout the story.So, excellent mystery story and clever ending. But better--much better--is the finely crafted evocation of this small northern place and how it feels to live there. The author must be more than a little bit of a naturalist as she describes with real feeling how the sea, fields, sky, etc. look, feel and smell. She includes details like the specific names of local birds and how they relate to the weather, season or even the foretelling of events. Also enjoyable in "Red..." is the wonderful collection of characters included and how they think, react and interact as families and individuals. Cleeves convincingly argues that the islands' social history dictates the dynamics of relationships in the present and that past tragedies always carry forward in those small places. So, if your grandmother did my grandmother wrong, you share responsibility for the alleged deed.A totally enjoyable read and recommended.

I enjoyed Red Bones which is the third book in the Shetland series. As with the first two books, Ann Cleeves brings Shetland vividly to life. She has a wonderful ability to transport readers to her chosen locations which creates a very strong sense of place.In terms of the story, Cleeves tends to let things unravel at a somewhat leisurely pace. I admit I found it a little too slow at times but it picked up when it needed to and maintained my interest. The ending however, confused me a little. Although the identity of the murderer was entirely reasonable, I was slightly confused by how the revelation came about. I actually thought I had missed out a few pages as the action to apprehend the murderer happened without any real preamble leaving me feeling like a key piece of information hadn't been conveyed to the reader. However, that’s just my personal opinion and doesn’t negate the overall quality of the writing. I’m looking forward to book number four, Blue Lightning which by all accounts promises some big surprises!

So after winter and summer in Shetland, "Raven Black" and "White Nights" respectively, it's the turn of spring in this the third book in Ann Cleves "Shetland" season. This time located away from the "Mainland" [as the biggest of the Shetland Islands is known] on the smaller island of Whalsey the story starts with the apparently accidental shooting of Sandy Wilson's grandmother, but it's not long before there's a second death and Jimmy Perez is in full-on investigative mode trying to establish a link between the two. [For those who have watched the TV series this is the "archelogy one" from the first series but the TV story wasn't a direct lift from the book]. But whether of not you've watched the TV series these books are worth reading as Cleves is a master storyteller who weaves a canny tail of murder past and present against the harsh Shetland landscape and it's unpredictable weather.But while I don't I usually enjoy detective stories that are centred on the detective, in this case because it's Sandy's family and not Jimmy Perez's I'll make an exception and the story works because Perez remains objective as he investigates. The only downside though, at four hundred pages it is perhaps fifty pages too long and the pace sags a bit in the middle and that's why it's four stars and not five but otherwise it's another good story in this very enjoyable series.

I read one Anne Cleves novels several years earlier as my initial foray into her work. I liked the introduction of Jimmy Perez into the Highland landscape. How disappointed was I with this book. The two crimes, which seemed totally random, proved to be totally inexplicable and disconnected when explained at the end. Most of the book was made up of descriptions of random members of the extended family and the surrounding countryside. Too many characters resulted in very little depth and understanding of the main protagonists in the plot. Seemed to end abruptly when I felt there could have been a postscript and tie up of loose ends. I felt let down. Left no impression with me. Disappointed.

In this third installment of the Shetland series, the author continues to deliver an engrossing, slow burning story with an excellent sense of place that reaches an exciting conclusion.I enjoyed this book, albeit a little less than the first two.The plot drifted at times; going round in circles. I think it’s, in part, because the principle characters in this book aren’t as strong as in her earlier work. The action takes place on an island of Shetland with a raft of new (or less familiar) faces.Also some of the writing was not as strong as previously. For example this piece of Holmes-esque deduction (not): the pattern of the sweater and the name made Perez thing Berglund’s family must be Scandinavian. Wow! Also the repeated tautological use of the adjective “pelagic” in relation to a fishing boat grated.I'd still recommend this book - but with the proviso you read the first two books in the series beforehand.

I love it when you come across a writer who has oodles of books that you have never read and you can plough through at your leisure. Luckily with the Shetland series I started at the beginning, so you can follow through on the lives of the main characters. I had seen the tv version but as with all things the book is so much better and so far I have only recognised one story but it was so different to the tv version it didn't bother me, that and a bit of memory loss comes in useful sometimes.Well written, you really get the urge to move to Shetland, and proper plots. The one I have just read I had tears streaming down my face towards the end. To give you some of the story would be wrong to me, so much better to give five stars and say it is very good. There's always different tastes of course, but this suits me wonderfully .