Ann Cleeves

The inspiration behind Shetland and Vera shares her love for the hit show and the wilds of Scotland

- with HANNAH STEPHENSON

DREAM TEAM Shetland stars Jensen and O'Donnell

We may be seeing Ashley Jensen and Alison O'Donnell on our screens in the 10th season of BBCI's Shetland, but author Ann Cleeves has not finished with her original fictional cop, DI Jimmy Perez, played by Douglas Henshall in the first seven series.

The bestselling author and inspiration behind Shetland and Vera has moved Jimmy from Shetland to Orkney, where he is living with his fellow police officer partner Willow = and together they've become a crime-solving duo in her new novel The Killing Stones.

“It was going to be a standalone but all my series started off as standalones and I really enjoyed writing it - I can't wait to go back to Orkney, too, which is a very special place” Ann says. “It's much gentler than Shetland, it's more green, fertile, in a sense it's more Scottish.”

Her last Shetland novel, Wild Fire, came out in 2018, when Jimmy was moving to Orkney with Willow so why did Ann bring him back?

“[ thought, that’s the end, I don't need to write any more about him, but then I get a kind of longing to go north again because I do love the islands, so it’s about place, really, and about exploring how Jimmy might fit in to a new environment and how his setting up home with Willow and their son might mellow him a bit, make him easier, happier.”

Ann, 71, who has enjoyed phenomenal success with TV adaptations of her book series featuring Vera Stanhope, Shetland and Matthew Venn, had a slow burn to publishing stardom.

“I was 20 years without any commercial success” she recalls. “The books went into libraries and the occasional indie bookshop but certainly you wouldn't have seen it on a Waterstones shelf. So it had to be fun. It didn't feel like work. It was what I did for myself.”