Book review – Blue Lightning

This review contains spoilers for Raven Black.

Blue Lightning rounds off the first Shetland quartet and brings off a powerful, emotional finish to one of the best series in crime fiction. Rarely do crime series manage to tell a story about their main characters that are engaging enough to be more than just another excuse to bring back the same detective to solve more crimes. But Cleeves has used every book in her series to tell the story of Perez’s developing relationship with Fran, and indeed, most of his books have crimes that take place in the communities of the main characters. Raven Black introduces Fran to us, and the third book, Red Bones, took place in Sandy’s home of Whalsay. This time, Perez takes Fran back to his childhood home on Fair Isle, the remotest of the Shetland Islands, and amongst the birdwatching community there, murder strikes.

There is a beautiful balance to this novel. On the one hand, we get to meet Perez’s parents, James and Mary. James is Fair Isle’s pastor and has a slightly distanced relationship with Jimmy. Fran’s presence there is a source of worry for Perez, who worries that she might not get on with her parents, or that there may be awkwardness. They are getting ready to be married and Perez is both excited and nervous for the future. This gives us the Fair Isle community and Perez’s character development. My only criticism is again that Perez also misses Fran’s daughter, Cassie, but I wish I saw them together, rather than just getting sentences like: “He loved Cassie with a passion that took his breath away at times.” Cassie’s role in Perez’s life becomes very important to the plot, but its lack of development makes it hard for us to get invested.

But these characters are pretty firmly out of the view of the crime, so we have in parallel a crime story in another world. Fair Isle plays host to birdwatchers, some there for research, some there as a hobby to spot unusual birds, but all of them foreign to Fair Isle and interconnected, as the world of birdwatching is small. The murder of the lead researcher amongst the bird watchers brings us into this fascinating closed world. The murder is straight from crime fiction, a neat knife to the back and a crown of feathers. The suspects have old passions and jealousies. There is love and there is blackmail, and secrets aplenty, but Cleeves manages to make this all terrifying rather than kitch, since she grounds her story in domestic detail and atmosphere. One of the point of view characters is Jane, a cook at the centre hosting the bird watchers. We see her do the laundry and prepare meals. We follow a birdwatcher as he makes an exciting new discovery. Cleeves grounds the heightened, strange world of the murder in the detail of her world.

And she also generates an excellent atmosphere. The mystery itself has so many layers and the characters have so many entanglements and secrets that gives the reader excitement aplenty to keep them going. But it is also fall in Fair Isle, a time of fierce westerly gales that cuts Fair Isle off from the rest of the world, and frequently shuts the islanders in their homes due to the horrific weather. This adds to the claustrophobia. The suspects are often trapped in the same place, and there is no way off the island. Jimmy Perez is struggling with the investigation, and there is no way for him to get help. He is on his own.

The development of this mystery moves alongside the pleasant but engaging story of Perez and Fran. But Cleeves never wastes a page or character or theme: all these other elements end up being threaded into the mystery. Clues are strewn amongst the daily chores and jealousy amongst the birdwatchers for each other’s discoveries is a major theme. And twice, in devastating fashion, the non-birdwatchers, the characters in Perez’s life, get tangled up in the crime. When the ending comes, it is sudden, brutal and terrifying, impossible to prepare for, and utterly unexpected. It is handled with such efficiency and emotional truth. It is a beautiful piece of fiction, a story not to be missed.