the sleeping, and the dead,/ Are but as pictures’ – The idea of death being the ‘picture’ or image of sleep, and vice versa, is common in both Shakespeare and other writers of the period, but, here, Lady Macbeth seems to mean that the sleeping chamberlains and the murdered Duncan are only to be thought of as visual images – ‘pictures’ – since they can do no harm. Duncan, although ‘painted’ with blood, only appears a horror; he can no more threaten or hurt than a ‘painted devil’ in a child’s picture book. Lady Macbeth had earlier considered the close relationship between death and sleep in lines 7-8. Macbeth’s weakness here seems to spur her to recover her own strength of purpose. He has a completely different attitude to such imagined ‘pictures’, which he regards as more disturbing than real horrors (cf. I.iii.137-8).

Porteous is a thorough detective. He had been moved to this quieter station after having a breakdown and his superiors felt it would be less stressful. Now he’s in charge of a murder investigation. Hellboy fights the sister in a space beneath the house. Meanwhile two B.P.R.D. agents meet up with a man who was helping Hellboy earlier in the story. The Sleeping and the Dead was published as a two issue mini-series in December 2010 and February 2011. It is however Porteous whose steadfast investigation, along with Stout and the team, that enables him to make the connections which lead to solving the murder. The story was collected in Hellboy – Volume 11: The Bride of Hell and Others, first published in October 2011.

This short film is essential viewing for students studying 'Macbeth', especially when considering the implications of this key scene.

The Sleeping and The Dead is a tense psychological thriller from Ann Cleeves, author and creator of three astounding TV series: Shetland, Vera and The Long Call.The Sleeping and the Dead is a tense psychological crime thriller from CWA Gold Dagger award-winning writer, Ann Cleeves. All of these qualities are honed close to perfection in later works. Here, for me, they are not quite enough. The threads are too loosely woven; the cloth doesn’t quite merge into a pattern until the rather hasty ending. The loom is a bit clunky.

Cleeves writes with an easy directness that brings alive the tensions in a place where everyone knows everyone else and nothing can be forgotten.”— The Times Literary Supplement (London) This is one of Ms. Cleeves earlier standalone novels, preceding most of Vera and all of Shetland. A detailed police procedural, it has her usual careful narrative and credible characters, as well as her trademark twists and turns and what was to me a completely surprising though, in retrospect, a completely appropriate ending.For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and still enjoys working with libraries. A suspenseful crime story that puts Ms. Cleeves in the Rendell class.”— Peterborough Evening Telegraph