Description:

Even if there had been no murder, the last trip of a small band of dedicated bird-watchers aboard the Jessie Ellen would still have been news. For George Palmer-Jones and the other avid crew members achieve every bird-watcher’s dream when they sight a sea bird which has never before been recorded. In the subsequent excitement, however, no one notices the sudden absence of the most fanatical birder of them all . . .

Later, Greg Franks’ corpse, the head bludgeoned, is found floating in the sea.

Had it not been for Greg Franks, amateur detective George Palmer-Jones would not have been on the bird watching trip in Cornwall in the first place. He had been hired by Greg Franks’ anxious parents to try and persuade their errant son to return home. George would have turned the case down flat but the offer of a free weekend’s bird watching was too tempting to resist. Now, he must unhappily shoulder the burden of finding why the young man had been murdered. Who hated Franks enough to kill him? Almost everyone, it seems . . .

From Publishers Weekly

Bribery, blackmail and suspects abound in this confusing ornithological whodunit. Seasoned private detective and bird-watching enthusiast George Palmer-Jones and his wife stet commas around Molly/he has only one wife/pk Molly are hired by a distraught couple to find their errant son, coincidentally George's bird-watching colleague Greg Franks. Gregpk is traced to a seabird-watching expedition in Cornwall, but while all on board are distracted by a rare petrel,p. 31 he is murdered and his body is thrown overboard.rather than say thrown overboard with a blow to his head, why not say something a little clearer: is found washed up (if that is the case), with evidence of a suspicious blow to the head, or somesuch It soon becomes clear that Greg had gotten on the wrong side of almost everyone on the boat: competitive birdwatcher Roger Pym; his hard-drinking wifestet commas here too?pk Jane, a probation officerp. 71 ; seemingly meek conservationist Duncan James; and the seductive Rose Pengelly's spurned would-be lover Gerald Matthews. The one the other characters are mentioned without comment/mc/stet one!pk intriguing character is police inspector Claire Bingham, struggling to balance the demands of her investigative work with those of her home life. Cleeves's ( A Bird in the Hand ) dry and awkward writing slows the momentum in the first half, but pk clues multiply and intrigue mounts, culminating clues convene with rare seabirds; a little lazily written in a devastating sea-storm.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Ann Cleeves is the author behind ITV's VERA and BBC One's SHETLAND. She has written over twenty-five novels, and is the creator of detectives Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez - characters loved both on screen and in print. Her books have now sold over 1 million copies worldwide.

Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of 'Murder Squad', working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (CWA Gold Dagger) for Best Crime Novel, for Raven Black, the first book in her Shetland series. In 2012 she was inducted into the CWA Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame. Ann lives in North Tyneside.

www.anncleeves.com