I have been working my way through all the Ann Cleeves novels as audiobooks. Wild Fire is the last Shetland book. The series isn’t as fatphobic as her Vera series but I do think Cleeves tells on herself a lot in her books.

Perez is a real jerk to boss and fling Willow! I have never understood why he’s been described as “soppy” or emotional in any of the books but he was very cold and odd in this one. He has always been pretty low key emotion-wise to me. He cares about people but in a way that you’d hope any human being would. If anything, he gets obsessed with some of the female victims and witnesses in a strange, almost creepy way—making up stories about them and then being puzzled when they aren’t as he builds them up in his head. Sandy, who is painted as a real dunce, always has come across as more thoughtful and emotional. Young but honest about his thoughts and feelings.

I think they fudged the timeline between the books with this one. Maybe to soften the blow of Perez moving on? No way it’s been years since Fran’s death! This book only takes place a few months after the previous (third) book, there is no getting around that. The first book in this quartet takes place a couple months after Fran dies and the second book a couple months after that. Then the third book just a couple months later. Each case doesn’t take months to solve. It’s been maybe 18 months but they explicitly say it’s been “nearly three years”. How? I guess its obvious to me since I listened to them back to back rather than as they were released but Cleeves should know her own timeline. They pretty much explicitly mark the passage of time in each book.

It was a solid mystery but I think the series should have ended with the last book since it started with Mangus’ funeral. That would have been a good bookend since Mangus was a major character in the first book. I would have swapped these two books in the series and honestly left his relationship with Willow the way it was in book three–in this book it is hard to believe that Willow would ever want to speak to him again.