Cold Earth

A body is found in the wreckage of a destroyed home. Consumed by the investigation, Inspector Jimmy Perez struggles for the truth in Cold Earth, the seventh Shetland mystery from Ann Cleeves. In the black 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, Inspector Jimmy Perez watches the flood of peaty water and mud smash through a croft house in its path. Everyone thinks the croft is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. Perez becomes obsessed with finding out her identity and what she was doing there. Then it emerges that she was already dead when the landslide hit the house and, suddenly, Perez finds himself with a murder to solve . . . Now a major BBC One drama, Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall. Continue the atmospheric crime series with Wild Fire, the final Shetland novel.

Ann Cleeves