Surely most lovers of the police genre in Spain know the investigator Jimmy Perez, the main police commissioner in the Shetland Islands, the northernmost point in the United Kingdom, halfway between Scotland and Norway. Now, there are less those who will have read their adventures, created by the English writer Ann Cleeves (Heresfordshire, 1954) in a long saga of novels that began writing in 2006.
The reason is that our country came before the egg that the chicken. That is, the BBC television series Shetland –that It is broadcast in Filmin and that in 2024 he was the most viewed of the platform – before Cleeves books. Now this somewhat strange situation has changed following the Spanish publication of Black crow (Main of the books).
This is the initial novel of the saga, which won in 2006 the prestigious Gold Dagger award and that also supposed the definitive support of criticism and public for its author, which thereafter could take the small screen not only the not only Perez series, but also the novels of Inspector Vera Stanhope and detective Matthew Venn, all of them projects of great media success.
Ann Cleeves has visited Barcelona to participate in one of the round tables of the BCNEGRA 2025, the city’s black novel contest, which brings together numerous authors and that this year has awarded its Pepe Carvalho award to the Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra.
From what I have read of you, he is already a person who began publishing with some age. Why did it take so long?
It was not really so old, my first book came out when I was about thirty -a few years old, but of course, I started writing before, always based on short tales that I already had written. It is true that for a while he wrote a lot, but nothing ended. Now, when I got married, I moved to live on a small island very close to the west coast of England. We went there because my husband was a ornithologist and wanted to study the birds in the area.
We were the only people who lived there, we didn’t have water or electricity and if you don’t like birds, I don’t like them, there was not much to do … so that was a great place to start writing my first novel, in which I kill a bird observer … And that I think he saved our marriage, since if he had not written, he would have crazy in that small and difficult place for a newly married couple [risas].
And since then it has been very prolific. How many books have you written in all these years?
It’s almost forty years and I’m going to book per year, so they must be about forty books.
A good rhythm. Does it have time to do something else?
Yes, I don’t feel any pressure! I love to do it and that is the part that entertains me about work. Keep in mind that during the first twenty years I had very little commercial success, so if I wanted to continue writing without feeding me, I had to be fun, I had to enjoy it, and it has been. I can say that I still get up very early in the morning, I feel at the table of my kitchen and I start telling stories, because that is what I love to do.
Black crow It is the first of his novels translated into Spanish and the first of the series of Inspector Jimmy Perez, who lives in the Shetland Islands, the northernmost and isolated confine of Scotland. However, you have a long and successful race in the United Kingdom. Why has it taken so long to enter the Spanish market?
I think it is a very saturated market, where there are already many English authors [risas]. Seriously, I know that it is an important market where Spanish editors have many copyrights on crimes among which to choose and, obviously, betting on an unknown without references is always a risk.
In this sense I think that the fact that television series have made my novels popular has helped a lot. On the other hand, Black crow [aparecida en 2006] It is my revelation novel, the one that has given me prestige. It was a novel that made me go from being at the bottom of the literary world to be a bit more commercial, sell better and have recognition. From there, I made the jump to the United States and then to the rest of Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavian countries.
Why did he put the protagonist of the series of Shetland, Jimmy Perez, a Spanish surname for such a remote stage?
Because I wanted the first book, Black crowreally about what it is to be a stranger, feel out of place, which is what happened to me during the time I was as a cook assistant in Fair Isle, a tiny islet of Shetland that is a sanctuary of birds and little further. I think that in small communities there is a great struggle to belong to the community, something that is not always easy if you have your own personality.
I decided to put the policeman a Spanish surname because in the seventeent
Ann Cleeves, novelist
At the time of writing the novel I was not thinking of a series, so he wanted a central character that belonged, but at the same time did not belong to the place, which may end up leaving the Shetland. I decided to put the policeman a Spanish surname because in the seventeenth century a ship of the invincible Navy called the Great Griffon was sank in those coasts. There were sixty survivors and some may stay on the islands to live and form a family, so I thought that my protagonist would be a descendant of one of them, with what I had the duality that I was looking for: a true Setelandic but with an exotic surname .
And any reason to put Pérez?
At that time I was reading a novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and I thought it would be a kind of tribute, since I am a fan of his novels [Cleeves sonríe].
Those who live in small communities, as is the case in the Shetland Islands, have secrets that everyone really knows but that nobody speaks
Ann Cleeves, novelist
It seems that in his novels human and social relations are never what they seem, that behind the appearance of a well -avenue community they beat unsuspected tensions and that they can end in crimes …
I believe that those who live in small communities, as is the case in the Shetland Islands, have secrets that everyone really knows, but of which nobody speaks, as a tacit pact. The reason is that you have to work together, you have to live together … but that does not mean that the tension does not accumulate. I remember that when I lived in Fair Isle, almost 50 years ago, people didn’t hung their clothes on Sunday because it was a rest day.
There was that question that everyone saw that the right thing was being done, as if everything was very transparent, open as the landscape of the area, all plain and without trees, only grass and the sea. You can see at a great distance what the neighbor does, but in reality you can not see what cooks inside, which corrodes his soul …
Consequently, the motivations of the crimes that you describe in the series are not usually greed, but of animosity, personal enmity, that is passionate.
I grew up reading what we call “Black novel of the Golden Age” and, in reality I was a fan of Agatha Christie, to which I consider cold and ruthless, someone who did not give his characters with a soul. I like ambiguous and contradictory characters, who like to play with the rules and subvert them, but at the same time suffer, they are not at all robots of the crime. I think this scheme works very well in black novel applied to small and close communities.
I was never a fan of Agatha Christie, whom I consider cold and ruthless, someone who did not give her characters a soul
Ann Cleeves, novelist
Most of his novels have been converted into series in the United Kingdom. At least it has three successful series. Maybe they have made ambassadors series to enter other countries, as has happened in Spain?
It is a lovely way to say it! I like that of international ambassadors because they do not doubt to enter new markets, as in effect it has happened in Spain with Shetland. The series that best works abroad is Verathe one with the protagonist of Vera Stanhope and that develops in Northumberland.
It works amazing in the United States and also in Australia, and I think it is because the actress who plays the protagonist, Brenda Blethyn, is a great artist who was nominated for an Oscar in 1998 by the film Little Voice. I think this happens because in those countries there are many expatriates who see Vera And they feel at home, which ends up taking my books definitively, who upload their sales … [Cleeves sonríe traviesa].
What do you think of the adaptations of your novels? Donna Leon recently told me to give up the series that a German producer made about the commissioner Brunetti …
I accept that they are not at all equal to the novels, which is usually happening … for example, in my books Jimmy Perez is Moreno and, as you can see in the series, Douglas Henshall [el actor que le interpreta] He is Rubio, has the phenotype of the Classic Scottish. I think television or cinema are very different forms to literature and you cannot ask that your books reproduce exactly as in paper. I want to think that the director of a series knows perfectly how it should do for the story to work on the screen.
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