A vivid psychological suspense novel from the bestselling crime writer

When fifteen-year-old Marilyn Howe turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay's doorstep he has little choice but to invite her in. Marilyn and her mother, Kathleen, are a familiar sight around Heppleburn, a strangely inseparable couple. But Kathleen has unaccountably failed to return home that evening, and Marilyn is fearful for her mother's safety. Ramsay takes the young girl home, to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes' dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later,...

News of the murder first came to Inspector Stephen Ramsay early on Monday morning. He was in a meeting, one of the endless meetings the Chief Superintendent regularly called, and the summons from Sergeant Gordon Hunter came as a relief. They found middle-aged farmer Ernie Bowles lying on his kitchen floor. He had been strangled, and was not a pretty sight. The gruesome discovery of his body had first been made by the beautiful Lily Jackman, a new-age traveller who was living with her boyfriend in a caravan on Bowles's land. Neither of them, however, had been close to the dead farmer, who had...

Ann Cleeves' bestselling series of crime novels, featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, and now also adapted for a major BBC television series, draw their inspiration from the place in which they take place: Shetland. An archipelago of more than 100 islands, it is the one of the most remote places in the United Kingdom. Its 1500 miles of shore mean that wherever one stands, there is a view of the sea. It has sheltered voes and beaches and dramatically exposed cliffs, lush meadows full of wild flowers in the summer and bleak hilltops where only the hardiest of plants will grow. It is a place where...

A Quick Read from the bestselling crime author of Raven Black.