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Ann Cleeves's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Ann Cleeves recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Ann Cleeves's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
'Can you ever come to terms with a missing child?' Julia Davidsson has not. Her five-year-old son disappeared twenty years previously on the Swedish island of Oland. No trace of him has ever been found.

Until his shoe arrives in the post. It has been sent to Julia's father, a retired sea-captain still living on the island. Soon he and Julia are piecing together fragments of the past: fragments that point inexorably to a local man called Nils Kant, known to delight in the pain of others. But Nils Kant died during the 1960s. So who is the stranger seen wandering across the fields as...
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Recommended by Ann Cleeves, and 1 others.

Ann CleevesThis one is so interesting. I judged the International Daggers this year and he was highly commended. It’s his first novel and it’s set on Øland, an island in the Baltic off Sweden. Many years ago a small boy disappeared. He just climbed over his parents’ garden wall and went into the fog. (Source)

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2

Jar City (Inspector Erlendur, #3)

From Gold Dagger Award--winning author Arnaldur Indridason comes a Reykjavík thriller introducing Inspector Erlendur

When a lonely old man is found dead in his Reykjavík flat, the only clues are a cryptic note left by the killer and a photograph of a young girl's grave. Inspector Erlendur discovers that many years ago the victim was accused, but not convicted, of an unsolved crime, a rape. Did the old man's past come back to haunt him? As Erlendur reopens this very cold case, he follows a trail of unusual forensic evidence, uncovering secrets that are much larger than the murder of...
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Recommended by Ann Cleeves, and 1 others.

Ann CleevesThis is Icelandic and it’s the first in the series. Another miserable cop and the backdrop of Iceland which is bleak and rainy or snowy. The cop has a daughter who’s a junkie and he doesn’t see much of his kids. I chose this one because it could only have been set in Iceland, could only have been about Iceland. The plot is all about the human genome discovery and stuff. I won’t go into it but it... (Source)

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3

The Water's Edge (Konrad Sejer, #8)

A married couple, Reinhardt and Kristine Ris, are out for a Sunday walk when they discover the body of a boy and see the figure of a man limping away. They alert the police, but not before Reinhardt, to Kristine’s horror, kneels down and takes photographs of the dead child with his cell phone. Inspectors Konrad Sejer and Jakob Skarre begin to make inquiries in the little town of Solberglia. But then another boy disappears, and an explanation seems more remote than ever. Meanwhile, the Ris’s marriage starts to unravel as Reinhardt becomes obsessed with the tragic events and his own part in... more
Recommended by Ann Cleeves, and 1 others.

Ann CleevesFossum is Norwegian and she’s very intense. When you meet her she’s very intense. She writes about these small communities and she writes beautifully, beautiful language and the translation’s really good. She’s good on the rippling out from tragedy. So a child is killed and she writes about the ramifications, the effect on other people in the community. Again she has a male detective who sorts it... (Source)

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4
The highly anticipated first novel in the Inspector Van Veeteren series in now available in English. At last, American readers will be able to enjoy, from its very beginnings, this addictive series by one of Europe’s most beloved and best-selling crime writers.

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and...
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Recommended by Ann Cleeves, and 1 others.

Ann CleevesWell, he does but this one, The Mind’s Eye, is much lighter. It’s also Swedish but the central character, another cop, Van Veeteren, is grumpy but has a great sense of humour so the book is full of jokes, one-liners. There is a sense of fun and play in Nesser. This book was the third one of his to be translated into English and although he’s a Swede his books aren’t set in any European country.... (Source)

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5

Sidetracked (Kurt Wallander, #5)

Fourth in the Kurt Wallander series.

In the award-winning Sidetracked, Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden’s former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with a handful of obstacles—a department...
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Recommended by Ann Cleeves, and 1 others.

Ann CleevesSidetracked has this Kurt Wallander as the central character and he’s the classic miserable cop in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. It has one of the most brilliant openings. He’s great at setting up stories, it’s always really visual. There’s a young woman running through a field of rape, and you can just imagine this woman and the yellow rape and she sets fire to herself. Kenneth... (Source)

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