An exhibition at The Herring House art gallery is disturbed by a distraught stranger who claims to be an amnesiac unaware of his true identity, a situation complicated for Inspector Perez when the man turns up murdered the next day.

When a woman's body is discovered at the renowned Fair Isle's bird observatory, with feathers threaded through her hair, the islanders react with fear and anger. With no support from the mainland and only his fiancé to help him, Shetland Detective Jimmy Perez soon realizes that this is no crime of passion--but a murder of cold and calculated intention.

"Ann Cleeves is back with the sixth book in her Shetland series featuring Inspector Jimmy Perez, whom readers will remember from Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones, Blue Lightning, and Dead Water. A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Shetland to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends. But, one of them, Eleanor, disappears--apparently into thin air. It's mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected...

"Hoping for a fresh start, an English family moves to the remote Shetland islands, eager to give their autistic son a better life. But when a young nanny's body is found hanging in the barn beside their home, rumors of her affair with the husband spread like wildfire. As suspicion and resentment of the family blazes in the community, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate. He knows it will mean his boss, Willow Reeves, returning...