The Shetland Series by Ann Cleeves

 I have now read all eight of Ann Cleeves original series of books, and I've seen all TV episodes u to the end of series seven. I know I have two more series to look foward to, with a change of lead as DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshal) is replaced by DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen). 

I have enjoyed all of them, print and screen, which has surprised me a bit. I often prefer books to filmed interpretations, but these differ a lot, particularly in characterisation and I have really enjoyed both. Ann Cleeves is a superb writer, grounded in her locations and deeply involved with her characters. 

The TV interpretation of the Shetland stories is excellent, the cinematography and locations are beautiful, enigmatic and give the entire series a noir atmosphere which really suits the stories, although liberties are taken, and only series one and two are based on the stories in the books. The character of Fran, in particular is very different, she doesn't appear at all on TV, she's just Cassie's deceased mum and Jimmy Perez' dead wife. 

The characters of two other police officers, Sandy Wilson and Alison McIntosh (Tosh) are treated radically differently in the books. Sandy (played on TV by native Shetlander Steven Robertson) plays a major role in print, the action is often from his POV and his character's development over the series is almost as good as that of Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall), whilst Sandy's TV role is subordinate. On the other hand Tosh (Alison O'Donnell) is Perez right-hand woman on TV yet hardly gets a mention in the books at all.

The first, two part TV series is based on The Red Bones, which is probably the best of the books, so I'm not surprised they chose this story to begin with. It worked and was popular so series two involved three more books, Raven Black, Dead Water and Blue Lightening. Each story was given two episodes. After that the TV stories diverged from the remaining novels. 

As a fellow writer I will name the TV writers, no more actors:- episodes were written exclusively for the screen by Gaby Chiappe, David Kane, Richard Davidson, Robert Murphy, Alexander Perrin, Paul Logue and Louise Ironside, Later series 8 - 10, which I haven't yet viewed, are by Paul Logue and Denise Paul.

Meanwhile Ann Cleeves, the author, has just published another Jimmy Perez novel, which I'm excited about and look froward to reading. It's her first Perez story since 2018 and is no longer set on Shetland. Ann has said about the book, that she felt there needed to be more to DI Jimmy Perez story. I agree.

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves - review

 I've begun reading The Shetland series by Ann Cleeves, for those who don't know, some of this series has been adapted and turned into a very successful TV series, much of it really filmed for the BBC on Shetland. The TV shows are atmospheric, tense, well acted and visually striking, with a very film noir feel about them.

The books so far (I've read 3 of the 8) are different, a bit more mundane in places, and characters and subplots are different. Red Bones is the third in the book series and I have some memories of the TV production of this storyline. However the book is better, with more character development, particularly for the more minor characters. I won't be reviewing them all, but red Bones is my favourite so far.

Red Bones is set in the small island community of Whalsay, the sixth largest of the inhabited Shetland Islands. The name Whalsay means whale island. The sparse landscape and overwhelming foggy weather is beautifully depicted.

Mima was a mother, grandmother, gossip, floozy or witch, depending on who detective Jimmy Perez speaks to. She was always the life and soul of the island, but who shot her? This tiny community harbours secrets, it lives on lies as well as fishing and crofting

And whose is the red skull dug up by visiting archaeologists?

This novel has some beautifully depicted characters, particularly Mima, Sandy who is her grandson and a junior police officer, and the young archaeologist, Hattie.

I remembered some of this story from the TV series, but the characters are differently drawn, subplots are different and any foreknowledge didn't spoil my enjoyment. Plus I couldn't remember who dunnit! In a way solving the murder was subsidiary to the story of this community and its secrets.

A really enjoyable read, thoroughly recommended.

Auto da Fay - by Fay Weldon - review

 

Sue's Reviews > Auto Da Fay

Auto Da Fay
by 

Fay Weldon

Sue's review

May 30, 2023  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: biog-memoir, non-fiction

Fluid, fluent and very readable memoir. Fay Weldon has never been a pretentious writer. Her work is always concise, not for her the 20 line sentence or the deliberate use of obscure or obsolete words and quotes.

She gives us her relationships rather than her career as a writer, though it soon becomes obvious how writing was always her destiny. It runs in her blood and her genes.

She gives us characters in the form of her father, a distant figure and her mother too often very present. Her doomed sister, her grandmother, her lovers, ghosts, husbands and friends abound. Most of the really important people are the women. The men are culturally dominant and usually unreliable, she shows the reasons for feminism before modern feminism began.

Her novels are mentioned, but in flash-forwards. Is there a second volume of this memoir?

Fay Weldon is now, in the 2020's, no longer such a fashionable writer but god is she important. Her death at the start of this year may, very sadly, mean her importance is forgotten.

Matter - A Culture Novel - By Ian M Banks

 When I was on page 305 of 'Matter' I wrote myself a note:-  

"So far so nearly good. Apart from a gory murder early on this Culture story (which isn't totally a Culture story as it's set on a world beyond the periphery of the Culture) is almost entertaining enough, actually funny in places. The shell-worlds are an interesting and convoluted idea which could only have come from Iain M Banks' fervent imagination. There's just a little too much description and back story/side story/technical and/or political and/or philosophical detail which holds up the narrative."

Now I've finished its almost 600 pages I still agree with my previous thoughts but I have enjoyed the novel, despite the convolutions which are mainly in the technological descriptions not the narrative. There is much humour, especially in the heightened dialogue and philosophical discussions between human and alien characters. Despite plenty of murder, gore and mayhem, 'Matter' is not as dark as, for example, Ian M Banks' earlier Culture novel, 'Use of Weapons'.

The three main characters are: Ferbin, Prince of the Sarl who does not want to be king,  Holse, the Prince's right hand man and probably the most intelligent human present, and Djan-Siery who is Ferbin's sister and not what she seems, having spent time visiting the Culture and being adopted by the Culture's Special Ops department.

With part Medieval cultural beliefs and steam-punk technology, the Sarl become embroiled in an unexpected conflict which nearly leads to the destruction of their home land and the entire colossal shell-world on which they occupy the eighth level. Only Ferbin, Holse and Djan-Siery can save the world...

Surfacing by Margaret Attwood -review

 

Sue's Reviews > Surfacing

Surfacing
by 

Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author)

Sue's review

May 14, 2022  ·  edit

liked it

bookshelves: might-read-again, mystery, novels

Read 2 times. Last read May 10, 2022 to May 14, 2022.

An extraordinary book, very unsettling. I may have to read it again to get my head around the meanings in the story and imagery. Her descriptive powers are brilliant.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan - book review

 On Chesil Beach

by 

Ian McEwan

Sue Gilbert's review

Jan 03, 2021  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: might-read-again, favourite-authors

Nearly a five star. Stories like this are why Ian McEwan is one of my favourite authors, I read it almost at one sitting. On Chesil Beach is not a long book and its 166 pages are full of beautiful characterisation, detailed yet uncluttered description and sparse, telling dialogue.

Edward and Florence are innocent, just married and in love. But it's 1962 and even though they are intelligent, educated young people they are stuck with the almost Victorian codes and mores of previous generations. Sadly for them, the summer of love is still a few years away, although their emotional and, in Florence's case physical reserve seems so deeply ingrained, they may have been unable to take advantage of so much liberation.

Intensely moving and intimate story of how love can go so easily wrong, when people won't/can't talk about sex.

Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin - book review

 Standing in Another Man's Grave

by 

Ian Rankin (Goodreads Author)

Sue Gilbert's review

Oct 08, 2020  ·  edit

it was amazing

bookshelves: favourite-authors, might-read-again, mystery, whodunnit

A brilliantly told story. Tense, engrossing and unputdownable, is that a word? Spellcheck seems to think so. Anyway I finished all 422 pages in 52 hours while still getting on with a lot of other stuff, and having a few hours sleep.
So much I could say about this 18th incarnation of Rebus, but I won't do spoilers.
I will just say Rebus is on the road, not much of the story takes place in Edinburgh. The litany of the roads travelled and the places visited may be music to the ears of anyone who feels that a part of their past is in Scotland. Almost lyrical descriptions in places, plus some very believable, tense and humorous dialogue between Rebus and other investigators.
So yes, I enjoyed this one! Thank you Mr Rankin.

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin - Rebus #13 - book review

 I really enjoyed this book. I very seldom give a book five stars but it was about time Ian Rankin had five. Resurrection Men fits the bill because I never thought I could describe a Rebus novel as funny, but this one is, at least in places. It's mainly down to awkward situations and excellent dialogue which is concise and full of humour, black and otherwise.

Convoluted plotting is necessary to get to the conclusion and along the way are plenty of dubious characters - most of them policemen - and a lot of agonising for Rebus and Siobhan Clarke. People get killed, most of them are deserving though not all. Not every plotline is filled with humour, after all this is a Rebus novel.

Basically, the High Hedyins are using John Rebus, an awkward and bloody annoying cop, in a sting operation to get some awkward and bloody bent cops. Inevitably it goes pear shaped. Are Big Ger Cafferty and his sidekick, the Weasel, involved? What do you think?

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, read a John Rebus book. I can recommend most of them,  although this may not be the best one for beginners. It's hard to come by well written detective fiction and I wasn't really a fan until I began reading Ian Rankin's work, which is usually extremely well written. This is an author who doesn't just know exactly what each word means, he also knows exactly how to use it for maximum effect.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3515717586?fbclid=IwAR3kgBFz5zQ6oQ6wH9_uc7AI7aM-u4atPu2zKZ1jVUzvzn21vLh7jtPXovI

Strip Jack by Ian Rankin

Not initially a 'whodunnit,' more a 'what has he actually done?' Spoiler - it's a he! Not much of a spoiler though. Flows well, plenty of interesting characters. Strip Jack's well enough written, as expected from Ian Rankin, not my favourite though.
I'm trying to read the Rebus novels in order - a lockdown project - but have already slipped, I read book 5 before starting book 1; will next have to read book 7 as I don't yet have a copy of book 6. Oh well, as Peter Green would say...
Strip Jack is a lot less gory than other Rebus novels I've read. I read a few of the later ones, in a random order several years ago and always remembered the atmosphere and gruesome nature of the stories. This book also lacks some of the atmosphere associated with the series, though scenes set in a tiny B&B and in a detention unit for the criminally insane are engrossingly detailed.
There are just one or two minor glitches in places, repetition of things we already know and, in cinematic terms, a couple of continuity slips. Maybe it was rushed to publication just a week too soon! Note to self - must remember to take off my editing/proofreading hat when trying to enjoy novels which have already been published, and years ago at that!

King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine - Book review

A great story, very well written and increasingly tense and unpredictable, one of Barbara Vine's darkest creations. A feeling of impending catastrophe grows as the story's convolutions wind and wander.

There are a dozen or so characters, all misfits in their own way, but who is the protagonist, the main character? Is it Jarvis, the obsessive railway enthusiast who is writing a history of the London Underground? Is it the poor little rich girl who goes on the tube for the first time in her life and loses her wedding dress? Is it Alice, a talented violinist, fleeing her loveless marriage to Mike? Or maybe it's young Jasper who's careless mother Tina lets him skive off school and ride the underground with his friends? Or Jed, who owns a demented hawk, or Tom the busker with delusions of grandeur, or Axel the dangerous stranger who has a dancing bear. Maybe it's Jasper's grandmother Cecelia, who is in love with her best friend.

Some of these people are more unhinged than others. They and others live in or visit a ramshackle former school where a former headmaster had hanged himself with the bell-rope. By the end of the story his is not the only death.

The main character is actually the London Underground, a surface section of which the garden of the old school backs onto. The presence of the tube permeates the entire novel, the people are all bit players by comparison, their stories depend on it.

Set in around 1980, the book seems somehow old fashioned for that era, the writing style and characters don't feel quite modern enough. But then it was published in 1990 and the author was born in 1930, so it's not so surprising. The faint scent of quaintness doesn't detract from the obsessive grip the story has on its characters, or the reader.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan - review

I was disappointed reading Amsterdam (reviewed in March), how the hell did that win the Booker Prize? I thought I'd better try a different Ian McEwan book, to see if he was still one of my favourite authors or if I should demote him. I went shopping, came home with The Innocent, written in 1990 but set in the mid 1950's.


The Innocent has been published with a number of different covers, trust me to buy the least interesting (the one on the right). Book covers are important but in this case had no influence on me, I was buying for the author.


It's sort of an espionage story, set in divided West Berlin during the 1950's. I was there as a teen-ager some time later so I decided I had to read this particular book. The setting is pretty real, a city still struggling to recover from the second world war, whilst suffering under the domination of the cold war. Although set before the Berlin wall was built, it felt familiar enough, I'd seen the check-points, the bomb sites. The main character is Leonard, a GPO technician seconded to work on a top secret project in the American sector of the city. I won't tell the story, impossible without spoilers.

The Innocent is very well written, as all McEwan's books are, he's a professional in every sense. The narrative is tense, a very good story. It does take a bit of digesting... hmm.  Maybe digesting is the wrong word. Is it a good read? Oh yes, definitely but maybe don't read the second half just after a large meal. 

Has it restored my faith in the author? Yes, it has. Although a very different story it takes me back to his first book, The Cement Garden which was also about innocence.

Unsuitable authors beginning with M; Alistair Maclean's HMS Ulysses

Continuing cataloguing my books - probably in a totally unprofessional way which would have librarians all over the world shaking their heads sadly. My alphabetical list of fiction authors now runs from A-Y - Ben Aaronovitch to Frank Yerby; no authors beginning with Z. No Q or X for that matter. What am I missing? Who am I missing?

Anyway I've now realised that I have a lot of novels - 56 - by authors beginning with M - Rose Macaulay to Julie Myerson. I especially like Julie Myerson's style of writing and her strange and sometimes cruel stories, but I've got more novels by Alastair Maclean than by her! This dates back to my early teens, before I became more interested in romantic historical fiction - hence the Frank Yerby. I'd been a tomboy as a kid and Maclean's simply plotted espionage and adventure stories appealed to me, a sort of grown up continuation of The Famous Five.

However the first Alistair Maclean I ever read was not an adventure story. It was his very first novel, HMS Ulysses, and I became obsessed with this rather grim and compelling story of the Arctic Convoys in WWII.  Maclean had served as a seaman on these convoys during the war and his descriptions of the hardships and perils captured my empathy and my imagination. I read it time and again. The strange thing about this book is, I had my paperback copy of HMS Ulysses with me at school and it was confiscated.

I was told it was unsuitable and I shouldn't be reading such things. I protested that there was a copy in the school library, which was true, but I was ignored. The book was returned to me at the end of term, without comment. For years I was bemused by the whole episode, until it recently occurred to me that this particular member of staff might have been confused and thought I was reading James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. If she'd really known anything about either book she would have known that the cover illustration, of shipwrecked men huddled in a lifeboat, was not likely to be set in licentious Dublin. School matrons obviously didn't need to be educated.

Authors Beginning With ?...

I've begun cataloguing my books - I was going to say my library but a) that sounds pretentious and b) can it be called a library while it is un-catalogued?

I haven't got very far. I began with fiction author's books. So far, beginning at the beginning I have :-

A - 25 Adams to Auster - seems a normal number of books, I mean you wouldn't want me to miss anything by Douglas Adams, would you. And I could do with more Atkinsons and Attwoods...

B - 47 Bainbridge to Byatt - maybe quite a lot but I can't blame Iain Banks, with or without an M, as the poor guy is dead.

C - 15 Calman to Crosthwaite - not so many C's, I wonder why. Who is missing?

D - 21 Dahl to Dunmore - You can't have too many Dumnores!

E - 5 - what? Yes that's right - Eggars to Evaristo but why only five and why have I only read one of them? Ok, Dave Eggars' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius took some reading but still....

I need more Authors Beginning with E... any suggestions?

'The Quarry' by Iain Banks - book review

Not Iain Banks most exciting book, though I found it very readable, with interesting characters and some great dialogue. In a way it's the author's full circle, returning to a rather claustrophobic world inhabited by a first person narrator who is a teenager, as in Banks first novel, the Wasp Factory. The Quarry however is far less gruesome than the Wasp Factory, though it deals with cancer and the ultimate death of the teenage boy's father.

The Quarry won't necessarily be an especially easy read for some people, cancer is a tragic issue in many peoples' lives. As Iain Banks was himself dying of cancer when it was published, this makes the story sadder still. However he insisted that was purely coincidence. I wonder...

I'm very sad that one of my favourite authors will never write another book, but at least there are a couple of his which I haven't read yet - and I've still to get through all of his very dense 'Culture' novels written in his other guise as SF maestro Iain M. Banks. This man had an imagination the size of the universe!

For loads of information on Iain Banks (with or without the M) his website is - http://www.iain-banks.net/

More book reviews at "https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21777224-sue">View