“Guilt was like a shadow, always there, changing shape, darkening the edges.“
This review contains spoilers for Raven Black and Blue Lightning.
Of the Shetland mysteries, Thin Air is the creepiest one, leaning gently into the tropes of horror. On Scotland’s northernmost isle, the isle of Unst, two women have gathered for their friend’s hamfarin’, a traditional Shetland wedding reception. One of these women disappears, leaving a mysterious message, whilst the other sees a strange girl in traditional dress dancing. The girl looks just like Peerie Lizzie, a child who drowned decades ago, and whose ghost is said to grant children to women who see her. Perez is called in to investigate the disappearance, which quickly turns into a murder investigation.
The murder takes place on a remote location, but travel back and forth from Lerwick and Ravenswick means that the story never feels too remote. The two friends that have come to visit are Eleanor and Polly. Eleanor goes missing, but Polly, an uncertain woman, is the one who has seen the strange disappearing child. Amidst the bare landscape, the child appears and disappears again. The death of a Peerie Lizzie years ago seems to have a bearing on the case today, a device Cleeves has used before to great effect, namely in Raven Black.
The ghostly child is perplexing, and gives the book a haunted feel. We as readers begin to question if she is supernatural or not, though given the genre of the book, we tell ourselves there must be a rational answer. But how does she tie into today’s disappearance and murder? And threaded into this is the theme of loneliness. So many of the suspects in the story are lonely, especially Polly, who feels apart from her friends and uncertain in her lover. Yet the recurring characters are lonely too: Sandy Wilson begins to wonder if he should settle down with a girl, Perez is still recovering from grief, and Willow Reeves begins to discover her feelings for Perez, feelings she can’t act on as Perez is still grieving Fran.
It is Perez that is the beating heart of this book. By this point, the series aspect of Shetland is firmly entrenched, and Perez’s emotional journey is the main reason the readers are here. After the dark grief of Dark Water, where Perez is at his nadir, the reader gets to see him in recovery, his guilt and sorrow not forgotten, but no longer choking and debilitating. The old Perez has returned, but darker, more lonely, and not sure how to respond to Willow Reeves, who is at once his boss and a woman who begins to interest him. The character work is beautiful, reason alone to enjoy this book.
The only weakness lies in the story’s conclusion. Meticulous plotting keeps us interested throughout the book, and a whole array of clues have come to the reader through a maze of twists and turns. But the solution is complicated and difficult to guess, largely because the denouement tries hard to convince us of a solution that fails to emerge organically from the plot. There is no eureka moment that leaves us convinced we should have seen it along, just a faint sense of bewilderment. It is the only flaw in an otherwise brilliant, thrilling and atmospheric novel.
Wet Broken Things 