The Duncan Lawrie Dagger replaces the CWA's Gold Dagger award, and the winner receives 20,000, making it the world's largest award for crime fiction. This series is the basis for the hit BBC show Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall, which attracted over 12 million viewers in its first two nights on the air. In 2006 Ann Cleeves was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet. mystery readers with this unforgettable series debut. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbors nervously lock their doors, while a killer lives on in their midst.Īnn Cleeves is sure to dazzle U.S. But when detective Jimmy Perez and his colleagues from the mainland insist on opening out the investigation, a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man-loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies beneath a deep layer of snow. Winner of Britains coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Ann Cleevess Raven Black introduces a dazzling suspense series to U.S. Raven Black is the first book in Ann Cleeves bestselling Shetland series. What makes the novel stand out is the sense of place that seeps through its pages and the amazing level of detail through which Cleeves defines her characters, in particular Jimmy Perez and the recluse Magnus Tait. It is on the surface a fairly straightforward police procedural.

Like Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse or Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks, Cleeves' new detective, Inspector Jimmy Perez, is a very private and perceptive man whose bailiwick is a remote hamlet in the Shetland Islands. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance. Raven Black is the story of two murders separated in time. Long a celebrated crime writer in Britain, Ann Cleeves' fame went international when she won the coveted Duncan Lawrie Dagger for this amazing suspense novel, Raven Black.

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves