Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves ***

Reading dates: 27 June – 15 July 2021

My last Shetland novel, the eighth one, the four in the elements series.

Seasons series

1. Raven Black (3*)
2. White Nights (4*)
3.  Red Bones (3*)
4.  Blue Lightning (5*)

Elements series

5. Dead Water (4*)
6. Thin Air (3*)
7. Cold Earth (3*)

Wild Fire still centres too much around Jimmy Perez’s love life and that makes it lose some of its detection power I think. Knowing it is the last of the characters, though, I get why. Jimmy needs closure too. It is a nice case, well rounded and with relatively interesting characters, but I miss the Jummy and the Sandy of the seasons series. They must have got older, and they feel it …

I put a call on facebook for new crime fiction and the responses of writers and novels I did not know was overwhelming so I look forward to following some of those up. I will miss Shetland, though, its landscape, its dramatic weather and its high crime incidence. Maybe I need to go and visit one day. A friend of mine told me they are filming the next TV series in Kilmacolm. Why not do it in Shetland? …