Ann Cleeves Press. Ann Cleeves Ann Cleeves (born 1954) is an English crime-writer. In 2006 she won the inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger, the richest crime-writing prize in the world, for her novel "Raven Black". Cleeves studied English at Sussex University but dropped out. She then took up various jobs including cook, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer, library outreach worker and child care officer. She lives in Whitley Bay, and is widowed with two daughters. The Vera Stanhope novels have been dramatized as the TV detective series "Vera" and the Jimmy Perez novels as the series "Shetland". In 2014 Cleeves was awarded an Honorary
Jimmy McNulty experiences with real detectives, he feels that most crime dramas present their police characters with the falsehood that they care deeply about the victims in the cases they are investigating. Simon states that in his experience a good detective is usually motivated by the game of solving the crime—he sees the crime as an "insult to his intellectual vanity" and this gives him motivation to solve it. The character was originally named Jimmy McArdle but because no one liked the name, executive producer Robert F. Colesberry suggested renaming him Jimmy McNulty (after his maternal grandmother). The McArdle surname would be