My editor and I had decided it would stretch credibility to have more than one series of murders in a place as small as Shetland. When I first started writing Raven Black I thought it would be a stand-alone book. When you began writing the first Shetland book, did you envisage it becoming a series? If so, how did you see the characters developing and did this change as the series progressed? A reviewer once said that I write Village Noir. In close-knit communities, any tragedy hurts everyone, because there's always a personal connection. I've always enjoyed traditional detective stories, but Shetland also has the atmosphere and space of Nordic novels, so it gives me the best of both worlds: an enclosed community where everyone knows each other and the kind of bleak beauty that provides a chilling backdrop. I first went to Shetland more than 40 years ago after I dropped out of university and I fell in love with the islands. Why did you decide to set the series in the Shetland Isles, and what do you think is the appeal of crime stories set in close-knit communities?
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