Cold Earth Audiobook By Ann Cleeves cover art

Cold Earth

Shetland, Book 7

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Cold Earth

By: Ann Cleeves
Narrated by: Kenny Blyth
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A body is found in the wreckage of a destroyed home. Consumed by the investigation, Inspector Jimmy Perez struggles for the truth in Cold Earth, the seventh Shetland mystery from Ann Cleeves.

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

At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Inspector Jimmy Perez watches the flood of peaty water and mud 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. Perez becomes obsessed with finding out her identity and what she was doing there.

Then it emerges that she was already dead when the landslide hit the house and, suddenly, Perez finds himself with a murder to solve . . .

Now a major BBC One drama, Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall.

Continue the atmospheric crime series with Wild Fire, the final Shetland novel.

 Genre Fiction Police Procedurals Small Town & Rural Crime Thrillers Mystery Crime Thriller & Suspense

Critic reviews

The new queen of crime
One of the most memorable entries in the series
All stars
Most relevant
Another brilliant thriller, perfect narration....Can't wait for the next Shetland episode.
listened all day.....perfect pandemic escape

Another brilliant thriller, perfect narration....

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Characters interesting and real, storyline also, until the rather flat dénouement. Bit of a disappointment after the build-up

Uninteresting ending

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I guess I look for stories where there is at least a chance of working out who the killer or killers were. In this case I don’t believe there was any such thing. In murder mysteries and thrillers I guess we get used to plot devices such as the protagonist saying “I’ll tell you later“ or a lat minute piece of evidence seen by the detective but not revealed to the reader. But where there are too many unknowables and nothing specific to indicate killers’ motives until the end reveal, the whole story becomes an exposition in the last couple of pages. I’ve read quite a few Anne Cleaves books and am a big fan of the TV series, but this story did not stand up well against those.

Entertaining but a disappointing reveal

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