Book review – Raven Black

“No one knew he had this beautiful creature to visit him. She was his treasure, the raven in his cage.“

Raven Black is no longer a new novel, as it was written in 2006 by Ann Cleeves. It was the book that shot her from relative obscurity into fame, written as a standalone, but ending up inspiring seven more sequels. Set on the Shetland Islands, it follows DI Jimmy Perez as he investigates the strangulation of teenage schoolgirl Catherine Ross . The story follows Perez, who investigates the crime; Fran Hunter, an English artist who moved to Shetland with her young daughter Cassie; Sally Henry, Catherine’s best friend; and Magnus Tait, the old man who lives alone and who is instantly suspected by the community of being the murderer.

Even after 16 years, from a novelist who churns out a novel a year, this is still Cleeves’s best novel. It brings together everything Cleeves does so well, and adds a bit more besides. Firstly, there is the extraordinary evocation of Shetland in the Winter, with its very short days, the Viking pageantry of Up Helly Aa, the claustrophobic, gossiping communities, where “you couldn’t fart without the whole of Shetland knowing about it”. The cold, the dark, the ice, the peat, all of it comes together perfectly. Into this Cleeves slots her characters. There are locals born and bred, and new immigrants from England. There are big-shot businessmen and artists, school teachers and recluses. The characters are all interconnected, and vary widely in personality and goals and motives. Some of them are brilliant contrasts, especially the vital and young Catherine Ross and Sally Henry besides the lonely and slightly sinister Magnus Tait.

The choice of time, weather and the first delight of introducing Shetland (which is so different from anywhere else you can write about in Britain) is what brings the whole thing together in terms of place, for Raven Black has a touch of Nordic noir to it. Cleeves also shows her characteristic brilliance in painting characters, allowing the story to stretch beyond the murder mystery. She never lets the plot stop her from being faithful to her characters and their internal worlds. There are a lot of subtly brilliant moments in the novel, especially when we see how two characters interact, or when we see the same scene from two points of view and see how differently two characters can interpret the same event or scene. It is this nuanced portrait of people that makes the novel so memorable.

But beyond all this, Cleeves also tells a cracking good murder mystery. The clues are there, and the possible motives varied. There is also sufficient confusion around the clues presented to prevent most readers from finding the truth, though a careful reader might guess at the truth. The ending is particularly good, the reveal not only surprising, but so sudden a twist it’s almost hard to follow. The plot rolls along nicely, never slow, but never too tense till the end, when it seems impossible that the story could possibly end in anything but disaster.

This is the modern murder mystery as it should be. Along with Robert Galbraith, Ann Cleeves was my introduction to the mystery genre as it stands today, a glimpse of the treasures that the genre has to offer. I’ve never looked back. Give this a try if you don’t read murder mysteries, and maybe you won’t look back either.