Thin Air

 Thin Air (2014) by Ann Cleeves

A group of friends from college go to Unst in Shetland, the northernmost point in the UK, to celebrate the hamefarin (homecoming/reception) of one of their group. After a London wedding ceremony, Eleanor Longstaff and Polly, along with husband Ian Longstaff and partner Marcus (respectively), are on hand when Caroline Lawson and Malcolm Lowrie go to Malcolm's home in Shetland to continue the festivities. The foursome rent a cottage and plan to make a holiday week of it. Eleanor is a television director who is planning a show about why/how smart people believe in ghosts (to put it simply). Unst has its own ghost--Peerie Lizzie, a young girl who was drowned decades ago and whose appearance foretells either pregnancy or death. Eleanor claims to have seen the ghost and then she disappears the night of the hamefarin. Her body is found later lying face up in a shallow pool of water--arranged as if for a painting.

Detective Jimmy Perez and his superior officer Willow Reeves are sent to investigate and stay at an inn owned by a former magician and his partner. There are plenty of secrets to uncover and it's difficult to determine if the killer is one of the London outsiders or one of the island's inhabitants. Then they discover that Eleanor had already made contact with some of the inhabitants about the ghost and had recorded the interviews...and the recorder is missing. After Jimmy finds the recorder among the things belonging to the former magician. When the magician is killed as well, Jimmy begins to wonder if the case is somehow connected to that long ago drowning. As with most things in life, it's a little more complicated than that.

As with the previous Jimmy Perez book I read, the setting is just as much a character as the people in the book and at times more so than some of them. The fog coming down regularly gives the island an even more secluded feel than its location. When the characters walk along the coast you feel like you're right there with them and when Polly follows the girl who looks just like the ghost and then gets disoriented in the fog you feel lost as well. Cleeves uses various characters' points of view to give a very full picture of the place. The characters are solid as well, though I would have enjoyed it if Ian and Marcus had been fleshed out a bit more. 

My biggest quibble is with the murderer's motive. I can definitely see that motive as valid for a certain type of person. But I don't think the interactions with that character and what we learn about them through others' points of view give us enough substance to have figured that motive out on our own. Given what we find out along the way I don't see how the murderer could have misinterpreted the situation in the way they did...a misinterpretation that spurred them on to murder. And to murder not once, but twice. Based on that information the second murder is even less logical than the first.

But overall, a good mystery with good characters and sense of place. ★★★ and 3/4.

First lines: The music started. A single chord played on fiddle and accordion, a breathless moment of silence when the scene was fixed in Polly's head like a photograph, and then the Meoness community hall was jumping.

Last line: And the whole island was there to meet them.

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Deaths = 3( one drowned; two hit on head)