The novel opens with the death of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl named Catherine Ross, whose body was discovered in a field on New Year's Day by Fran Hunter, an English artist staying in Shetland.

Magnus Tait had previously been questioned in an old case involving the eight-year old disappearance of Catriona Bruce, a six-year-old child who lived near his house and often visited him to play.

Fran Hunter also finds out that Catherine Ross attended a party hosted by her ex-husband the night before she died, and reports this fact to Taylor and Perez.

They also learn that since her death, the documentary had gone missing, although her notes reveal that it was thematically inspired by Robert Frost's poem 'Fire and Ice'.

Fran Hunter later also discovers the body of the missing child, Catriona Bruce, hidden among some rocks in a peat bog near Tait's house.

Although Tait is subsequently arrested and charged with Catriona Bruce's murder, there is insufficient evidence to link him to Catherine Ross' disappearance.

In a review in The Independent, critic Jane Jakeman wrote that Cleeves "...creates a convincing world of hostility against outsiders, of genuine ancient feuds but pseudo-history for the tourists, of small snobberies and major jealousies.

[10] Raven Black was adapted for radio in 2010, by Iain Finlay MacLeod, directed by Kirsteen Cameron and starring Grant O'Rourke as Jimmy Perez.

[12] The BBC adapted Raven Black for television in 2014, as the first and second episodes in the second series of Shetland, starring Douglas Henshall as Jimmy Perez and Brian Cox as Magnus Tait.