Cold Earth

From the winner of the 2017 Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger

They were just in time. They watched as headstones were tipped over like dominoes and the landslide rolled across the pebble beach beyond and into the water… Perez watched the tide of mud sweep it away.

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

At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and peaty water 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. In his mind, she shares his Mediterranean ancestry and soon he becomes obsessed with tracing her identity.

Then it emerges that she was already dead before the landslide hit the house. Perez knows he must find out who she was, and how she died.

‘One of the most memorable entries in the series.’ – The FT

‘Ann Cleeves is a skilful technician, keeping our interest alive and building slowly up to the denouement. Her easy use of language and clever story construction make her one of the best natural writers of detective fiction’ - Daily Express

Cold Earth is the seventh book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series and also marks her thirtieth book in thirty years of writing and publishing. Cleeves became a household name with the award-winning major BBC One drama of her series Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall and the ITV serialisation of her Vera series. Yet Waterstones’ booksellers and readers alike were singing her praises long before that. Many of her novels are rooted in the wild Northumberland landscape that is her home including the novels featuring her detective Vera Stanhope who first appeared in The Crow Trap in 1999. Cleeves is also the author of several standalone novels include The Sleeping and the Dead and Burial of Ghosts.

Earlier titles in the Shetland series in order are Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, Blue Lightning, Dead Water and Thin Air.