Ann Cleeves' Jimmy Perez Returns!

 LUCY BURDETTE:  I am a huge fan of the Shetland series. In fact a huge fan of all Ann Cleeves’s books. You might remember that the Friends of the Key West Library was lucky enough to persuade Ann to appear last winter as our gala guest of honor. So I’m delighted to welcome her to the blog today! She has a brand-new addition to the Shetland series coming this fall and I can’t wait!

Ann, Jimmy Perez’s life changed so much over the course of his series. How much of that arc had you imagined when you were writing the first, Raven Black? Has his life surprised you?

ANN CLEEVES: Thanks so much! Raven Black was intended as a stand-alone novel. My editor loved the book, but said it would stretch credibility to have more than one murder in a community as small as Shetland.  But this was my breakthrough novel - it went on to win the CWA Dagger - and she decided that perhaps it would run to a small series... Since then, the BBC and I have killed off a good proportion of the islands' population.  Look out for more television, but after eight books, I've decided to move Jimmy and Willow to another setting.

LUCY: I was disappointed that there wouldn’t be a 9th book. In the past, you said that enough bodies had fallen on the poor Shetland Island. But now a new book is coming this fall! Please tell us a little about that, and also the decision to continue that beloved series.

ANN: I thought the series would end after Wild Fire.  I'd said all I wanted about my beloved Shetland.  But more recently, I felt a longing to move north again, a homesickness for the islands. Wild Fire ends with Jimmy and Willow moving to Orkney - the group of islands that lie between Shetland and the Scottish mainland - to begin a new life together.  I first went to Orkney fifty years ago, so I know it, but before writing the new novel I spent a week there with a good Orcadian friend to get a more detailed, contemporary sense of the place.  The result is The Killing Stones.

 LUCY: Your major characters are police detectives. How much research does this take and how do you do it?

ANN: I don't do too much research.  The story is always more important to me than accurate detail, and usually I write the book first and check later if there are gaps in my knowledge.  I have three very good friends who help - an academic and former crime scene manager, a forensic soil scientist and a forensic pathologist. The latter is Dr James Grieve, who appears as himself in the Jimmy Perez books.

LUCY: You’re not afraid to kill off major characters. Without spoilers, how do you decide this must happen? Does it come to you as a possibility while you’re writing the book, or do you think about this ahead of time? Do you think about reader reactions as you write these scenes?

ANN: I don't do much planning before I start writing.  Perhaps because it took me such a long time to get any commercial success, the process doesn't feel like work - it's still fun.  Sometimes, though, I think it's good to show the real result of violence and the reaction to it within a tight community.

LUCY: You’ve been writing and publishing mystery novels since 1986, but were not, I think it’s fair to say, an overnight sensation. (This gives me hope.) would you say that your career really took off with the Duncan Lawrie Dagger award for Raven Black, and could you talk about the long arc of your career?

ANN: I was published for 20 years before my publisher contracted any books in advance, and even after the Dagger it took a while for the novels to gain any real popularity here in the UK.  The award did get me noticed overseas though and Raven Black was published to good reviews in Europe, Scandinavia and the US.  That allowed me to give up the day job.  I find it amusing that the recent reprint of Raven Black is selling so nicely - I see it in supermarkets and airport bookstores.  That never happened first time round!

 LUCY: All three of your latest series have been developed into TV shows. We’d love to hear a bit about how that happened—the wonderful story about your lucky break, how much input you’ve had into the characters and stories, and what it’s been like to see your people come alive on the screen.

ANN: The first of the Vera novels is called The Crow Trap. It didn't sell particularly well and books ended up in charity shops.  A woman picked up a copy in an Oxfam shop in North London to take on her holiday.  There's nothing unusual about that, but she was called Elaine Collins and was books executive for ITV studios.  They were looking for a series with a strong female detective to adapt for television and decided that Vera might work for them.  Elaine went on to produce both Vera and Shetland. I always think of her as my fairy godmother.  The same production team also made The Long Call, based on my Matthew Venn books. I decided from the beginning that the production team knew more about making good television than I did, so I let them get on with it.  I did show them around the places where the books are set, because geography is so important to each of the series.

 LUCY: At the beginning of each of my Key West chapters, I add a quote from an author who is especially good at writing about food and eating. Turns out I’ve used 9 of yours. Here are two from Raven Black:

"She tried to imagine Mr. Ross, sitting at their kitchen table while her mother hacked at the overcooked meat and picked away at him with her questions."

"Mr. Scott was a pale, thin man. A stick of forced rhubarb said Sally’s mother, who had seen him at a parents meeting."

I’m curious about how much you think about food when it comes to revealing character?

ANN: Food reveals character, but it also says a lot about place.  In The Killing Stones, there's a lot about fish - Westray, the small island where the first murder takes place is famous for its fishing - and look out for fatty-cutties, a very specific Orkney delicacy!

Thank you, Ann, for visiting! Reds, she’ll be stopping in to answer your questions so bring them on!

About The Killing Stones

Coming in October, this is a new standalone novel featuring Detective Jimmy Perez, last seen in Wild Fire, the final book in Ann Cleeves’ bestselling Shetland series. When a violent storm descends upon Orkney, the body of Archie Stout is left in its wake. An unusual murder weapon, a Neolithic stone bearing ancient inscriptions, is found discarded nearby. Detective Jimmy Perez, no stranger to the complexity of human nature and the darkness it can harbour, is soon on the scene. He counted Archie as a childhood friend, so this case is more personal than most. Here, in these ancient lands where history runs deep, Perez must discern the truth from legend before a desperate killer strikes again . . .

ANN CLEEVES Visits the Reds!

LUCY BURDETTE: Reds, I cannot tell you how excited I am to introduce today's guest. Ann Cleeves is the author of 8 Jimmy Perez Shetland books, plus eight Vera Stanhope novels, among others. She has a new series debuting next month with A LONG CALL. She won the CWA dagger award for Raven Black, and has had two series developed for television. Ann, we are rabid fans of your work and so very happy to have you here!

LUCY: I am a huge fan of the Shetland series and just finished Raven Black, which I read after all the others. Jimmy Perez’s life changed so much over the course of his series. How much of that arc had you imagined when you were writing Raven Black?

ANN: I didn’t have any of the story arc planned when I was writing Raven Black.  I thought it would be a single, stand-alone novel.  The theme of the book is about belonging and the outsider, kindness and inclusion.  That’s why Jimmy Perez is such a contradiction; he belongs, but not quite.  He’s a Shetlander, but he comes from Fair Isle, the most remote inhabited island in the group and a place most Shetlanders have never visited.  His family has lived in the islands for generations, but he has a Spanish name and a Mediterranean appearance.  When she first read the book, my editor was clear that it would be a stand-alone novel – it would stretch credibility to have more than one murder in a place with a population of just 23,000 – then it sold more copies than anything else I’d written and we agreed it would run to a short series.  Wild Fire, recently published in the US in paperback, is the eighth and last.

LUCY: I’m sad about the series ending with Wild Fire though I won’t argue with your decision! I would love to hear what went into the decision to let Jimmy and Willow go off without a bunch of readers watching their every move?

ANN: I knew that Wild Fire would be the last book, though I’m hoping that there might be more TV series.  I never plot in advance, so when I started writing, there was even a possibility that I would kill Jimmy Perez!  I understood a little about Willow’s situation, because that was fore-shadowed in the previous book, Cold Earth.  I wanted an ending that would be a little ambiguous, and would mark a new beginning in the lives of both central characters.

LUCY: Now Vera...she seems to experience less internal growth than Jimmy--maybe this is because she doesn't experience the dramatic life events that Jimmy Perez did. Was this an intentional choice? 

ANN: I think Vera’s character was formed early in the events of childhood, and though we learn more about that during the books, back story is harder to do in the TV drama.  I think the scriptwriter did a great job of explaining her past in the adaptation of The Seagull.  Vera grew up without a mother, raised by a father grieving for the woman he adored and resenting the burden of a child, especially a daughter.  By the time we meet her, you’re right, she knows who she is and what she needs: her work, her team and her house in the hills.  Definitely not a man!  When we meet Jimmy Perez, he’s on the brink of a new life back in Shetland, and we travel with him through the good times and the bad.

 LUCY: You use multiple points of view and seem to know many characters very well. How do you choose which character tells which part of the story?

ANN: I love writing from multiple view points.  The joy of writing is to see the world through another person’s eyes – and that’s the joy of reading too of course.  Again, the choice of POV is instinctive.  The returning characters always get a voice, and then I choose one or two others to help tell the story.  They grow in the writing and aren’t very much planned in advance.

LUCY: Some of the Reds have managed to snag an advance copy of the new book but I and many others are waiting until September. Can you give us a little preview of what’s coming?

ANN: In The Long Call, I return to my home county of North Devon.  I had a wonderfully happy childhood there and still have friends living in the largest town, Barnstaple. It’s an interesting region, beautiful, but quite isolated.  It pulls in holiday makers, but also transient seasonal workers, drifters, and there’s a lot of rural poverty.  My new series character Matthew Venn grew up in a fictional enclosed, rather blinkered religious community called the Barum Brethren.  When he lost his faith, his world crumbled and he found order again by becoming a police officer.  The book starts with him standing outside the chapel where his father’s funeral service is taking place, feeling unable to join in.  Then of course, he gets the call that a body has been found…

Photo: © Ph Matsas / Opale

LUCY: Who has inspired your work, and along that same line, what do you like to read?

ANN: My reading passion is crime fiction in translation.  I love the sense of vicarious travel.  I believe we have a sense of a culture’s preoccupations when we read its popular fiction and that at a time when we seem pulled to extremes, we need that insight and understanding.

Ann, thanks so very much for taking the time to answer our questions. Reds, Ann will be stopping by to answer questions and comments, if Blogger cooperates! And you can read more about Ann and her books on her website and twitter and facebook, and buy her books wherever books are sold.