Shetland Isles: Beating the chill with 'White Nights' by Ann Cleeves.

It's summertime in Shetland and the sun never sets: during those white nights it seems like everyone goes a little crazy.

A stranger falls to his knees weeping in front of one of the pictures at the opening of a glamorous art exhibition. The man then disappears after claiming to Detective Jimmy Perez – attending the launch with one of the artists, Fran Hunter – that he is suffering from amnesia, only to be found dead the next morning.

White Nights is the second to be published in Ann Cleeves's Shetland Quartet of stories. The first, Raven Black, was released in 2006 to much acclaim, and White Nights followed in 2008. Over the last few days I've thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in a warm Shetland summer: the book is an engrossing puzzle that kept me guessing right until the very end, and has sympathetic characters I liked spending time with.

The story is focused on the isolated settlement of Biddista, a fictional location on the northwest coast of Shetland's main island. The village comprises little more than a few cottages and crofts, a manse where world-famous artist Bella Sinclair lives and an art gallery and restaurant called the Herring House, converted from a building that once dried fish. Ann Cleeves based the arts centre on the real Bonhoga Gallery at Weisdale Mill, a former grain mill housing Shetland's premier gallery showing local, national and international exhibitions of art and craft, plus a coffee shop, and famous throughout the islands.

The author herself provides a most helpful map on her website giving the general location of the first three books in the quartet.

Though part of the British Isles, the Shetlands are in fact 130 miles north of the Scottish mainland (12 hours by ferry, which is why the detectives from HQ in Inverness prefer to fly!). Shetland is further north than Oslo in Norway, Stockholm in Sweden, and even Moscow, and Lerwick is as close to Bergen in Norway as it is to Inverness and Aberdeen. The Shetland Isles are much further north than they usually look on a map of the British Isles, as they tend to be scrunched up in a box in the top right-hand corner with the distances not to scale.

Travel to the Shetlands is either by ferry from Aberdeen to Lerwick, or by flying from one of the major Scottish cities to Sumburgh in the south of the main island. The distance and lack of direct communications to many places on the mainland cause problems for Inspectors Taylor and Perez in their investigations. Cruise ships visit Shetland during the summer months, docking in Lerwick for a few days and offering various trips around the islands to their passengers, and it is with one of these that White Nights begins.

The Shetland Tourist Board are of course keen to encourage visitors and have been very supportive of author Ann Cleeves as she explains in her blog on the launch of White Nights at a gallery in Bloomsbury last April. Ann herself talks about living in the Shetlands for two years in the 1970s in this article for The Times.

The next in the series, Red Bones, will be published on 20th February 2009, and I'm looking forward to reading it!

Click on the map below to go to WhereDunnit's map of Ann Cleeves's Shetland Quartet:

Thanks to Roger Cornwell for permission to use his photo of the Bonhoga Gallery, Shetland, and to Jean Rogers for her wonderful view of Shetland, top.

Moniack Mhor Crime Writing Course

Moniack Mhor was a fabulous place to spend Easter Monday! From April 9th to April 14th 2007 I attended a stimulating course on Crimewriting, hosted by eminent British crime fiction authors Andrew Taylor and Natasha Cooper. They were inspirational, and the rest of the group wonderful companions.

The course, run by the Arvon Foundation, was held in former croft buildings up in the hills about 3 miles to the north of Loch Ness (which location actually features in Andrew Taylor's recent book "A Stain on the Silence" - highly recommended)

Every day we had morning sessions delving into the creation and construction of crime fiction. The afternoons were free for writing exercises, walking or snoozing. All of us had a private tutorial with both Natasha and Andrew - I found mine extremely helpful, even though I did have to mostly start over with my book!

We were divided into groups of three to do the cooking each evening for the whole party, plus any guests. Some had to cook twice, but I was lucky enough only to have to cook once (lucky for everyone else, that is...) The food was great throughout the week: the recipes are clearly written with all the ingredients provided and it's a super kitchen to cook and socialise in. We ate round a huge refectory table at one end of the main room. For lunch and breakfast we sorted ourselves out, though Richard made a pan of porridge every morning which was much appreciated.

I loved my whole timethere, and found it a very easy place to write. - the view from my bedroom was beautiful, and the isolation and splendour of the scenery meant it was easy to be creative. I even learned not to be so scared of the on-the-spot writing exercises we were given throughout each morning. At the start I was very resistant to these: by the end of the week I had learned that I could, in fact, get something respectable down on paper, and not to be so negative and nervous about them.



In the evenings after the meal we chatted, played Scrabble, gave readings from favourite books, and Andrew and Mark played guitar and sang. On Wednesday we had a guest speaker, Clio Grey, who read from her novel and short stories, and spoke to us about breaking into publishing. So to Anne, Jax, Sheena, Razaz, Joanna, Christina, Mark, Richard and of course Andrew and Natasha - thank you, and see as many of you as possible in Harrogate!