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Welcome to Shetland in mid-summer. Light fills nearly the full twenty-four hours and casts eerie and disorienting shadows. The fog rolls in and out and swirls all around, distorting distances and sound and enhancing the sense of isolation on these remote islands. The quirkiness of the people who have lived here all their lives or have chosen to leave the bustling mainland seems exaggerated by sleepless nights. In THIN AIR, a group of four southerners arrives at the most northern island, Unst, to celebrate their friends' wedding. By the end of the book, one of them is dead, and the lives of the others are changed forever.
Caroline, Eleanor, and Polly have been best friends since university. Caroline, strong-willed and strong-limbed, has just married a Shetlander and invited her friends and their partners to a celebration on the island. Beautiful Eleanor, a film director, brings her strong silent husband Ian along. Polly, a shy and emotionally fragile librarian, brings her world-traveling boyfriend. The two couples rent a house on the edge of the water, planning to make a week-long holiday of the event. Shortly after the party, Eleanor is dead and both locals and visitors alike are suspects.
Much of THIN AIR centers on a decades old story of a young girl who wandered away from her babysitter to drown; the story of Peerie Lizzie has been maintained over the years through song and legend, and many claim to have seen her ghost. Polly, who is a librarian specializing in folklore and ghost stories, is most affected by the stories of Peerie Lizzie. In the fog and behind smudged windows, Polly believes she has seen the famous ghost. As Polly becomes increasingly unstable, Perez investigates and attempts to put the island's ghosts and his own behind him.
As always in this series, Cleeves transports the reader to Shetland. Both the setting and characterization are very strong, and they only add to an intricately developed plot. In addition to the ongoing characters in the series who are further developed in THIN AIR, the main characters of this story, as well as those who play more peripheral roles, are all brought to life. There are no cardboard cutouts in Cleeves' writing. Because of the number of characters and the complexity in their motivations, the swirling and obfuscation of the fog mimics the constantly circling and unclear investigation. Cleeves does an outstanding job of providing clues while nonetheless keeping the reader in the dark. In the end, the pieces all fall tightly into place.
This sixth in the series of Jimmy Perez Shetland mysteries is every bit as good as we have come to expect from Cleeves. Although it is number six, it could easily be read as a standalone or as an entry point to the series. If the reader starts with this book, it will not spoil any of the previous mysteries, and the reader will want to go back to earlier books to find out how Jimmy got to this point in his life. For those who have been reading the series from the start, it will feel comforting to join Jimmy on his journey out of depression.
§ Sharon Mensing is the Head of School of Emerald Mountain School, an independent school in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors.
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, December 2014
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