Willow Reeves & Jimmy Perez Books in Order

Willow Reeves arrives in the Shetland novels as a senior detective brought in from outside, brisk, practical and unafraid to challenge Jimmy Perez. Over several books the two move from wary colleagues to partners in life as well as work, trying to build a family while still carrying the scars of earlier cases on the islands.

Stories such as Dead Water, Thin Air, Cold Earth and Wild Fire show them circling one another professionally and personally. Together they deal with the murder of a returning journalist, the disappearance and death of a party guest on Unst, an unidentified woman uncovered after a landslide and a nanny found hanged in a Shetland barn with rumours swirling around her employers. The work is demanding and often dangerous, but their slowly deepening relationship offers Perez a sense of home he has long lacked.

In the shorter pieces Too Good To Be True and The Lonely Man we see them beyond Shetland. First, Perez is drawn south to the Scottish Borders to look into the suspicious death of a young teacher at his ex‑wife’s request; later, he and Willow rent a cottage on Orkney, where an elderly farmer’s new companion and an unlikely romance raise questions that Willow cannot ignore. These stories help link the original Shetland sequence to Cleeves’s newer Orkney‑set work with the couple.

Across these novels and stories, Willow and Jimmy’s partnership lets Cleeves explore modern family life, blended households and the strain of policing far‑flung communities while raising children, all against a backdrop of tides, storms and northern island folklore.