Ann Cleeves book launch: Ugly crimes on Fair Isle

Published on Thursday 19 August 2010 19:28

A book launch with a difference is attended by a somewhat seasick DAVID ROBINSON

NEIL Thomson, skipper of the Good Shepherd IV, is a kind-hearted man. Just after I'd regurgitated my breakfast over the rail of the stern, he came up to me. "Don't worry," he said, "you're in good company. We once had an admiral who's sailed four times round the world and never been seasick in his life - but he was on this crossing. It gets a lot of people like that." "He was just being nice," Kenny the engineer told me later. "That crossing you came on was about as calm as it gets."

By now the cliffs of Fair Isle were see-sawing close up. Ahead, on the right of the small harbour, the island's new bird observatory was nearing completion. The Good Shepherd IV had brought in its bar fittings the previous week.

I've been to a few book launches in my time, but this one was different. The invitation to the launch of Ann Cleeves's Blue Lightning would be on Britain's most remote inhabited island. "It'll be great," said her publicist. "A whole weekend of great music, great craic - oh, and we'll pay your flights."

Blue Lightning is the last in Cleeves's Shetland Quartet, which began with 2006's Raven Black, winner of the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for that year's best crime novel. All four feature her detective Jimmy Perez, who was born on Fair Isle - where his father, incidentally is skipper of the Good Shepherd, although he's a rather more dour individual than the real one, and certainly not as good a guitarist. This, though, is the first novel in which she takes Perez back to his home island.

Fair Isle means a lot to Cleeves. She met her husband there while working as an assistant cook at the old, now demolished, observatory. He proposed after a party in the houses next to the North Light. "I insisted on him asking me again the next day when he was sober," she laughs. Her first crossing from Shetland to Fair Isle was, it seems, even worse than mine. At least I got to stand outside in the fresh air and wasn't locked in the Good Shepherd III's hold smelling of cowshit.

Once on dry land again, though, she soon became entranced by the island. It was - is still - as if there's a general rule about the more remote a place, the friendlier the people. There are only 70 people on the island but there's a palpable sense of community. A welcoming one, too: folk are genuinely interested in what you do and where you come from.

Blue Lightning is set in the old bird observatory - the setting for the first of three murders - and the original plan was to launch the book in the 4 million new building on the site, which would also provide accommodation for the guests. As it still wasn't finished, however, there had to be a change of plan.

Imagine what would happen on the mainland. If an event couldn't be held in a particular venue, chances are that it would just be cancelled. But the islanders weren't prepared to see that happen. They don't, after all, get too many novels written about themselves. So the guests were put up on crofts on the island, the community hall was opened up, and all - and I do mean all - of the islanders, from babies to great-grandparents, turned up for a ceilidh. The islanders had done the cooking: bannocks stuffed with reestit mutton, mounds of smoked salmon, piles of homebakes, and all the Unst beer and wine you could want to wash it down.

There's a moment in Blue Lightning when a bird-lover called Dougie Barr bursts into Perez's croft. He's out of breath, flustered, and he demands to use the phone. As there's already been one murder at the bird observatory, the expectation must be that he's just stumbled across a vital clue. But no: "There's a bird in the south harbour," he announces. "Trumpeter swan. A first for Britain!"

I meet the real Dougie Barr at the ceilidh. He's an affable Glasgow lawyer in his early forties, and he won a charity auction to use his name in Cleeves's novel. He comes to Fair Isle at least once a year, maybe more: he's even toying with the idea of retiring there. For a bird-lover, the island is paradise, a place where one is as likely to find rare birds from Siberia as from North America. So far he's seen all of Britain's birds, and most of the rarities on Fair Isle - apart from the rather dull and runty Pallas's grasshopper warbler, which he's pursued up to the island often enough but has still never seen.

There's a certain obsessiveness about Dougie's pursuit of rare species. And while carrying that obsession to the point of murder - as Cleeves does in her novel - may seem far-fatched, he praises the accuracy of her novel. "One thing the book hints at is absolutely true in real life," he says. "It's this: what happens when someone says that they've seen a particular type of bird and nobody believes them." In the birdwatching community, this is apparently a major issue: doubt someone's word that they've seen, say, a trumpeter swan, and you could easily find yourself in a libel case - even if not a murder one.

Chris Stout, a superlative Shetland fiddler, and his partner Lauren McCall, had been playing at the ceilidh, and when we got back to our croft they were joined by our hostess, the poet and musician Lise Sinclair. Past midnight, as there was no sense in having the generator on, they played by candlelight, the old spinning tunes filling the air as the drink and laughter flowed.

I was among strangers - incredibly friendly strangers, admittedly - but this, to me, was one of the best nights of the year. And yes, just about the best book launch I can imagine.

• Blue Lightning, by Ann Cleeves, is out in paperback from Pan, priced 7.99