J.'s Reviews > White Nights

… at this time of year, everyone went a bit crazy. It was the light, intense during the day and still there at night. The sun never quite slipping behind the horizon, so you could read outside at midnight. The winters were so bleak and black that in the summer folk were overtaken with a kind of frenzy, constant activity. There was the feeling that you had to make the most of it, be outside, enjoy it before the dark days came again. Here in Shetland they called it the 'simmer dim'. And this year was even worse. Usually the weather was unpredictable, changing by the hour, rain and wind and brief spells of bright sunshine, but this year it had been fine for nearly a fortnight... the birds still singing late into the evening, the dusk wich lasted all night, nature slipping from its accustomed pattern...

For this reader, Location is 2/3rds the battle. The right contrasts, the right measure of oddly exotic to completely everyday, even the right Light and Air, set the tone for once and for all. It's not the whole battle of course, because a sloppy mystery belongs to no location, serves no purpose, no matter where it is. No worries.

Ann Cleeves' Shetland Island series has that--uhm-- locked up. And with all the advantages of the right place--- better described by she than I-- it's got that sort of distant, contained Isolation thing going on. Which has served authors in many guises from decrepit Country Manor Houses ala Baskerville or Rebecca, to shipwrecks, to foreboding boarding schools in the hinterlands. Hello Hogwarts. (A locked-room mystery is the ultra minimalist's choice in this niche.) By intentionally confining the elements to a narrow set of variables, a mystery writer can ratchet up the suspense and make the actual plot seem really daunting, as there simply can't be a surprise culprit. Seemingly.

There is a sort of conflict of riches, with this series, accompanied as it is by the Bbc version-- that pits the same material, portrayed in different media, against itself. The Bbc series has the overarchingly enormous advantage of filming on the Scottish Archipelago of Shetland and adjacent locations; it's packed with incomparably unique, dramatic scenery. There is the tendency, for this viewer, at least, to drift off to examining the crags, tors, northern light and generally fjordish landscape so liberally framed-in --during discussions about how the body got there. Not generally a problem, as you'll refocus on the crime scene eventually, but. It's like watching a movie about the dangers of a tiger-ridden jungle place, and having a tiger in almost every scene. It almost splits the attention span.

Cleeves' book is a lovely evocation of a fairly complex mystery in that place, and manages quite well without the majestic drone or crane shots. Her aim is to turn up a bit of the anthropology of the place alongside the steady, workmanlike process of detection. A far Island town bordering the arctic circle is its own place, certainly, and its society and historical makeup are every bit as unique. So of course the villains, and the cops, are unique as well.

If there were a way to first read the books and then see the series, that would be the ultimate. As it is, you have to suspend a little technicolor in the book version, but aren't distracted by crane shots and the last rays of the sun crashing through the pounding surf every five minutes either.