Cold Earth - (Shetland Island Mysteries) by Ann Cleeves (Paperback)

About the Book

"In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the road and sweeps down to the sea. At the burial of an old friend, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud smash through a house in its path. Everyone thinks the croft is uninhabited, but in the rubble he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. Perez soon becomes obsessed with tracing her identity. Then it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit. Perez feels bound by duty--and something more powerful--to find out who she was, and how she died--

Book Synopsis

Cold Earth is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves' beloved Shetland series, which is now a major success for the BBC, and available to stream in the US.

From Ann Cleeves, winner of the Crime Writers Association's Diamond Dagger Award, comes Cold Earth.

In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the main road and sweeps down to the sea.

At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and water smash through a house in its path. Everyone thinks the home is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. Perez soon becomes obsessed with tracing her identity and realizes he must find out who she was and how she died.

Cold Earth is the seventh book in the beloved Shetland series, which is now a major success for the BBC.

Review Quotes

Praise for Cold Earth:

"The stark Shetland landscape provides an atmospheric backdrop for Cleeves's complex, relatable characters, especially Perez, a kind man dealing with his own tragic past."--Publishers Weekly

"The Shetland Islands provide a stunningly atmospheric setting for the complicated hero [Perez]'s latest procedural, a challenge he meets with determination and more than a little angst."--Kirkus Reviews

"Plenty of suspects on a remote Scottish island mixed with the high quality of Cleeves's prose make this a solidly plotted whodunit for procedural and traditional mystery readers."--Library Journal

Praise for the Shetland Island series:

"Ann Cleeves confirms that she is the best living evoker of landscape with Cold Earth."--The Guardian, Best Crime Books and Thrillers of 2016

"Nothing short of riveting." --Louise Penny

"In true Christie fashion, Cleeves once more pulls the wool over our eyes with cunning and conviction." --Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse series

"Intricate and engrossing...offers readers the pleasures of the traditional locked room/isolated island mystery." --The Washington Post Book World

"A key feature of the best crime writing is a vivid sense of place, and Cleeves gives us Shetland in all its rugged, rain-swept splendour, an island where if everyone doesn't know everyone else, it's only a matter of time."--Irish Times

"This sixth in the series of Jimmy Perez Shetland mysteries is every bit as good as we have come to expect from Cleeves." --Reviewing The Evidence

"Cleeves excels in capturing Shetland's stark, harsh beauty: the windswept land, the gray churning ocean, and hovering clouds. The often gloomy landscape is the perfect setting for tragic death by murder. Always eerie and haunting (thanks to the ghost of Peerie Lizzie) and certainly mysterious, Thin Air is perhaps the best and most compelling in the series so far." --Curled Up

About the Author

ANN CLEEVES is the multi-million copy bestselling author behind three hit television series--Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall, Vera, starring Academy Award Nominee Brenda Blethyn, and The Long Call, starring Ben Aldridge--all of which are watched and loved in the United States. All three are available on BritBox.

The first Shetland novel, Raven Black, won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for best crime novel, and Ann was awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2017. She was awarded the OBE in 2022 for services to reading and libraries. Ann lives in the United Kingdom.