NEVER RECEIVED THIS ARC

Michael Steinberger thinks French cuisine has gone seriously downhill in France, and that some of the most famous restaurants among gourmets and gourmands are no longer worth the mid-three figure bill that arrives at the end of a meal for two. His evidence seems compelling: chefs have become celebrities, and no longer spend much time in their kitchens, so that, for instance, Paul Bocuse’s filets de sole aux nouilles Fernand Point has become “a piece of tasteless fish submerged in a cream sauce thicker than plaster of Paris and flanked by a small pile of gummy noodles.” What a critique! Some restaurants remain wonderful – Taillevent, in Paris, continues to thrill even if it has inexplicably lost one of its prized Michelin stars. But raw milk cheeses are disappearing, fast food is becoming the norm, and chefs concentrate on building restaurant empires around the world instead of sending perfect plates out of their kitchens. Steinberger has written an elegy that you can smell and taste if you concentrate hard enough – and makes you wonder if that longed-for trip to Paris is really worth the price of the airline ticket any more. ( )

This is the second Shetland Islands Quartet thriller, which marketing decision was a good one...calling these thrillers instead of mysteries sets up the expectation of a whacking good read though not necessarily the play-fair-with-the-reader puzzle-solver that modern mysteries are.

Cleeves writes wonderfully clearly and carefully about flawed, real, lovable characters in bad emotional states because of violent, evil acts disrupting their very ordinary lives.

The stories she tells in this series, to date, are proof to me that she's looked deeply into human nature and seen what its outlines show to the astute...there but for the grace of God go I. Everyone in this book flees from their hurts. Their flight is, inevitably, unsuccessful. Jimmy Perez can't run from his flaming co-dependence. Fran Hunter can't run from her seething ambition. Bella Sinclair can't run from her self-created persona, an Iron Maiden as effective as any Inquistor's torture device. Inspector Taylor, back up from Inverness, can't escape his fear-driven energy. No one, not any one, escapes.

The white nights of the title are a phenomenon of the far north. The sun never *quite* sets enough for true, dark night to fall. It's unsettling to some, it's a biorhythm disturber of tremendous power to have the body's million-year-old clock disrupted by absence of night. It's used by vile people the world over as a form of torture to deprive a human of good rest. And yet, there are thousands whose entire lives are lived with this condition as backdrop, and they seem not to feel its downside too strongly.

But let's face it...this fact of nature is a thriller-writer's best birthday present. What better metaphor, and even a pretty subtle one, for bringing to light old wrongs, shining the pitiless lamp of the torturer on the consciences of those guilty of undiscovered crimes, than a sun that won't go down?

That's a very nice backdrop you've chosen, Mme Cleeves, and it works very, very well for your chosen story, right up to and including the resolution of the multiple crimes. It does not make up for the sense I got, throughout the book, that your focus wasn't on me, your reader.

I recommend the book, yes. I even think there are some things about it that are outstanding, including the character developments of Perez and Taylor. But as I careened from incident to incident, I didn't sense that you were laying out this tale for my delectation, but rather leading me like a museum docent from exhibit to exhibit, trying in a haphazard way to lead my somewhat dim brain to a conclusion you'd already reached and were now impatiently awaiting my "aha!" moment. I am already in possession of "Red Bones", and I am very much looking forward to seeing what you have planned for me next, but I am a little bit put out by this sense of magisterial disdain that I got from the resolution to "White Nights." I wish you'd let me get there with you, instead of running ahead and pointing and waving your arms. ( )

I read two thirds of the book and relinquished it to "it's not going to get better", and if it should, oh well.

This is the second book in the Shetland Island Quartet mystery series. It is set on the Shetland Islands in the modern day.

I got my RL mystery group to pick it for this month. I read the first book and then the second. We pick author/series and then read as many or as few in the series as we want.

I enjoyed the writing, the characters and the setting. This book was set in the summer with the almost constant daylight. Many of the same characters appear in both books and the second book allows them to develop more and have expanded personal stories.

Although the books are about a mystery they are also a look at the impact and results that a place can have on a person. The people are isolated, and confined together, and most know each other inside and out. They develop strange ways of coping with the weather, the isolation, the constant sun/dark and the others on the island.

The other interesting issue among the islanders is how they never, never forget who is a native and who is an outsider - called an incomer.

The mystery in this book is an outsider - a tourist has a public breakdown at an art show, and is later found dead. It is determined that he was killed and not a suicide as it was staged. The search is on to find his connection to anyone on the island. The investigation unearths current and past secrets and other murders.

Most of the action is centered on a small remote village and again involves the police team from Inverness.

I did suspect the murderer, though I had a whole cast of suspects. I also really didn't believe that the character who was the killer acted in a proper manner for how the character was developed and lived. Still it didn't really diminish my enjoyment, it was more of a' hmmm' moment. Maybe I just didn't want all the pain and difficulty that was caused by the guilt of that character.

Can't wait for book 3 - Red Bones to go into softcover in the US. ( )