Ann Cleeves on her return to the Scottish Isles

The bestselling crime author explains what drew her back north to DI Jimmy Perez.

An image of the jacket of The Killing Stones next to a photo of Ann Cleeves smiling to camera wearing a green and yellow scarf. The background is a close up of a map showing Orkney and Shetland.

In this letter from Fair Isle – the southernmost of the Shetland islands, the most remote inhabited island in the UK, and where Jimmy Perez, the detective at the heart of Ann Cleeves' Shetland series, is from – Ann takes us back to the start of her love affair with the Scottish Isles and explains why she decided to rekindle ours, by bringing back Jimmy Perez, this time in Orkney.

I’m writing this in my room in the new Fair Isle Bird Observatory. There’s a view of the North Haven and soon the mail boat – the Good Shepherd IV – will arrive at the pier there from Shetland Mainland. I’ll wander down with the islanders to catch up with old friends and see who and what is coming ashore.

Fifty years ago, I arrived into the haven on a different Good Shepherd. It had been a rough crossing and I’d never felt so ill. The whole island experience was quite new to me. I’d dropped out of university and by chance, I’d found a job as assistant cook in the observatory, which was then, as it is now, a place for serious natural history research and for visitors to the Isle to stay. I worked here for two seasons, met my husband here and on one summer afternoon, while we were helping a crofter with haymaking, we got engaged.

‘I’d felt a longing to return north in my writing, a kind of homesickness for the islands.’

This morning, I walked down the Isle and it was as if those fifty years had disappeared. I was twenty again, exploring on my days off, putting up snipe on the boggy ground of Vaasetter, enjoying the view across the scattering of croft houses towards the South Light, calling in to visit islanders for gossip and stories. It was surprisingly emotional, that collapsing in time. I felt rooted to the landscape, grounded in a place that meant so much to me. Still absolutely the same woman.

Despite being new, and almost palatial compared to the wooden hostel where I peeled potatoes and cleaned bathrooms, this observatory feels much the same too. It rose, almost miraculously, after a fire destroyed the former building, and the atmosphere is still friendly and welcoming. Staff and visitors eat together. Everyone gets involved with the life of the island. I felt at home here as soon as I arrived.

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Ann Cleeves' Shetland series books in order

Nearly twenty years ago, I wrote Raven Black, my first Shetland novel, the book that changed my writing career and allowed me to give up the day job. The central character, Jimmy Perez, came from Fair Isle. Last night, I met up again with Jimmy Stout, an islander and an old friend. When I first lived on the island, Jimmy had very dark hair and Mediterranean good looks – he could have been a descendant from one of the survivors of the Armada shipwreck, El Gran Grifon, which gave Perez his name, and Jimmy is convinced that Perez is based on him. In fact, he was always livelier than my creation, a little wicked. He loved a good time. He still does, and while he’s much wiser these days, he has the same grin, the same sense of humour. My Jimmy is rather more staid, a little haunted by an unhappy past.

I’d thought I’d finished writing about Perez after Wild Fire, the last of the Shetland books, but he’s become a part of my life again. I’d felt a longing to return north in my writing, a kind of homesickness for the islands. Wild Fire ended with a trip to Fair Isle, before the central characters flew on to their new home in Orkney. It occurred that I could move with them too. After all, I thought, why not?

The result is The Killing Stones, which will be published in the UK on 7 October. It’s set in Orkney Mainland and the smaller island of Westray. I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.