Dead Water by Ann Cleeves

Dead Water by Ann Cleeves

Jimmy Perez stopped for breath and looked out to sea. A still, calm day, the light filtered through high cloud so that the water was shiny grey, like metal. On the horizon a bank of fog. In the deep pockets of the long oilskin coat that had once belonged to his grandfather were pebbles the size of eggs. They were round and smooth, and so heavy that he could feel the weight of them pulling on his shoulders. He'd collected the rocks from the beach at Ravenwick, selecting them carefully: only the roundest, the ones that were white as bone.  In the distance, a little way out from the shore, there was a stack of rock shaped like a rough cross, tilted on its side. The calm water hardly broke around it. 

MY REVIEW: 

A journalist Jerry Markham's body is found in a boat by the marina. As Inspector Jimmy Perez is mourning the loss of his fiancee, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is brought in to investigate the murder.

Markham had been a Shetlander and he had left the place long time ago, leaving behind a scandal which involved young Evie Watt. She is now engaged to a seaman, John Henderson, who is much older than her.

The Procurator Fiscal Rhona Laing who found the body somehow seems to be involved. Jimmy Perez is unable to keep away from the investigations. He goes to Sullom Voe, where Markham was last seen before he was killed. 

The murky secrets come out in the open after another murder occurs. Somehow the conflict seems to be between those who wish to save the island and those who wish to open new industries. There are several undercurrents in the story line which keeps the reader totally involved.

Dead Water is fifth in the Jimmy Perez series but stands alone. The characters are well etched out and the suspense of the killer is wholly maintained till the end. It comes as a surprise to us. Cleeve's language flows very well. Her descriptions of the landscape is lyrical.