If your TV viewing runs along the Masterpiece Mystery line, you probably already know Ann Cleeves.
Ann Cleeves became an “overnight” success twenty books into her publishing career with a well-timed novel called Raven Black, an award-winning turn that soon launched the British TV series Shetland, a smash hit on both sides of the Pond. Other Cleeves books, long ignored, were nabbed up for the TV show Vera. Following the success of these two programs, another of her series starring Detective Matthew Venn also landed a TV show.
You may also recognize, then, an old friend in Ann Cleeves’s newest novel. In The Killing Stones, Cleeves takes readers to new places and brings them home because the book features Jimmy Perez, the beloved detective from the Shetland series Cleeves stopped writing a few years ago.
In The Killing Stones, we catch up with Perez in his new life with girlfriend Willow Reeves, their son, and a baby on the way. He’s left the familiar island of Shetland for the wilds of Orkney. (Americans, that’s a different faraway island. Actually, a series of them.) This new location gives Cleeves a wider vista to explore history, both archaeological and personal, as well as the long call of grief.
A new Ann Cleeves novel is a source of celebration in the crime fiction world. Fans all over the world have fallen for her detectives and for Ann herself, an unassuming woman very fond of walking the seaside and country lanes and turning all her favorite locales into the sites of fictional murder. These locales have all honored Cleeves for—this is not a joke—increasing tourism.
Ann’s own travels won’t bring her to the United States anytime soon, so instead, she and I corresponded by email to have a conversation much like we might have had in front of an audience.
The text has been lightly edited for clarity.
Lori Rader-Day
The Killing Stones has Jimmy back on the case, along with his girlfriend, Willow, who is pregnant with their second child. Jimmy and Willow’s power dynamic is interesting, since she used to be his boss and kind of still is. Can you talk about what was interesting about that to you?
Ann Cleeves
It was great fun writing the relationship between Jimmy and Willow. I certainly wasn’t interested in portraying the classic detective marriage, with the cop doing the exciting stuff and the wife being supportive at home. Or the more recent cliché of the female detective having to juggle work with kids and domestic responsibilities. But that wasn’t something I analysed or planned before I started the book. The wonderful thing about working on a series is that I know the characters before I begin. It’s like writing from memory rather than imagination. From my first draft, Willow was very much at the centre of the investigation, even though she’s pregnant and on maternity leave. I needed to find a way for Perez to have more agency. In the end, I think they work well as a team. There’s a level of emotional and professional respect.
I love writing series—there’s that ease of sliding back to a world I know well. You only write stand-alone novels, though, even though you’ve created characters I’d love to see return. Would you ever consider bringing back a central character? What about Dahlia Devine from Wreck Your Heart? Tell us where she came from. I think she’d very much like to take the lead in another novel.
Lori Rader-Day
I think it’s a sweet position to be in that readers wouldn’t mind one of my characters returning for additional books. But I also adore standalones, because the entire world of the character is captured in one book, complete. Is there room to expand that world? Yes, always, if I’m doing my job and the characters feel lived in and real. Dahlia would be a good contender for a series, though, because she’s fun. If TV ever came knocking the way it did for you, Ann, I would be ready.
Dahlia Devine was born from my desire to have more fun with the writing process and to share that joy with my readers. I made a list of what I was enjoying—this was 2020, so it was a short list—and Americana and country music made a surprise appearance. It’s been very fun to dig into the world of country and midwestern music, and to write a character who stays buoyant even in crisis.
Now, The Killing Stones has crisis at its core: Jimmy is dealing with the death of a friend. Something, sadly, most of us can relate to. Your work does a good job of making each fictional death feel real and meaningful. Is that important to you?
Ann Cleeves
I write British detective fiction, very much within the classic tradition, but I hope that they’re more than puzzles. The readers must engage with all the characters, even those who die in the first chapter! In contemporary British crime fiction, we especially have to understand the protagonists’ backgrounds and care about what they care about.
Orkney, especially the island of Westray, where much of the action of The Killing Stones takes place, is a small community. People grew up with each other and went to school together. Any tragedy will impact everyone. It’s a shock that something so violent can happen in a place where people don’t bother locking their doors or their cars. Crime fiction can depict not only complex and interesting people but also complex and interesting places.
Jimmy Perez is related to the victim, but they were good friends, too. Archie’s murder hits him, and he struggles to remain objective throughout the investigation.
You often write about Chicago, a city you know well. Were you aiming to portray a specific community within the city in Wreck Your Heart, as well as to tell a gripping mystery?
Lori Rader-Day
I can relate to the small-town aspect of the places you write about. In some ways, every Midwestern American setting engages with the idea that one person’s death affects the entire community. Chicago, as a large city, absorbs more than some of the small towns I’ve written about. Ann, you may not know this, but there isn’t just one Chicago. You can’t be vague about which Chicago is your Chicago; the neighborhoods have their own identities.
I’m not from Chicago originally, but I’ve lived in the neighborhood of Jefferson Park for more than twenty years. Jeff Park is one of the places in Chicago that even Chicagoans don’t know well. It’s nine miles out from downtown and the high-rise Chicago of TV and film that Brits would know. It does have a lot of personality that I wouldn’t want to see lost, as has happened to other spots in the city, and that’s one of the realities Dahlia is facing in Wreck Your Heart.
Mostly, I think you and I both aim to tell stories of characters that readers want to spend time with, no matter where they live. I know readers are excited to spend more time with Jimmy! With The Killing Stones, Jimmy Perez is coming out of retirement, in a book sense, because you ended the Shetland novel series a few years back. What made you want to send Jimmy off, and then what led you to bring him back?
Ann Cleeves
Yes, I ended the Shetland series after eight books, though it continues as a BBC drama, even without Jimmy Perez. After all, I think that the show is as much about the place as the character. Most of the external scenes are filmed in the islands. Shetland only has a population of about 21,000 people, and I felt that I’d explored it as much as I could. I still go back to see friends, and I’m still involved in planning Shetland Noir, the crime-writing festival that takes place there every three years. The next one will run in June 2026, and we already have some wonderful headliners.
I’m not quite sure where the impulse to return to Jimmy Perez came from. I’d finished a Vera novel—The Dark Wives—and I was ready for something different. I’ve spent time in Orkney, though I don’t know it as well as Shetland, and I’ve never lived there. I think I was curious about how well Jimmy had settled with Willow in a place that was new to them both.
I didn’t think I’d be able to set a novel in a place that I hadn’t explored as a resident, so it was a challenge. I spent a wonderful week in mid-winter staying with a friend in Harray on Orkney mainland. We went out to Westray, where my friend had grown up and where his relatives still farm. He helped me research the history and archaeology, which are so much a part of the place.
The Killing Stones was intended as a stand-alone, but I very much enjoyed writing it, so perhaps I’ll come back to Jimmy Perez and Willow again. I’m working on a new Matthew Venn book at the moment, and then I’ve promised one last Vera novel. But, after that, who knows? What about you? What are you working on now?
Lori Rader-Day
You’re trying to break my heart by saying “last” Vera novel, aren’t you?
I’m working on the novel that will be published in 2027, which is an amateur sleuth/private detective mash-up, and just having a blast getting characters into and out of trouble. That’s how I write, actually. I have always jumped into the writing as quickly as I can and figured out the characters and story as I went along. Sometimes I’ll have some guiding star to lead me, an image or something I want to be true for the characters, but I am usually writing my way in and then digging my way back out. Your process sounds as though you’re feeling your way through, too, following your own curiosity. How much do you plan what you’ll write versus writing to find out what will happen?
Ann Cleeves
I don’t plan my work in advance at all, apart from knowing where the book will be set, and if it’s part of a series, knowing something about the recurring characters. This is because for my first twenty years of being published, I had no commercial success at all. I still had to have a day job. So, the writing was an escape, fun, and there’d be no joy in it if I knew how it would develop.
Lori Rader-Day
I’m writing for joy from here on out.
We have a pretty cool job, Ann. And it led us to being friends, which I will always be grateful for.
I talked you into visiting Chicago for the first time a few years ago. It wasn’t that hard to twist your arm. Why did you want to come to Chicago, and what did you enjoy about your visit?
Ann Cleeves
I had a great time in Chicago, mostly because I was meeting readers and hanging out with writer friends. (Sorry, but I don’t rate your pizza though…) I’d wanted to visit ever since I first read Sara Paretsky. She is my hero. It was extraordinary, not just to spend time with you again, but also to do an event with both of you.
Lori Rader-Day
I knew you were going to bring up the pizza.
But I’m glad you enjoyed our city. We want you to visit again, and this time I’ll take you for an Italian beef.
FICTION
By Ann Cleeves
St Martin’s Minotaur
Published September 30, 2025
