But in the interests of fairness, I’ll add a quote about the appeal of the place rather than the rainstorms I complained about earlier. He does write some nice descriptions. Scotland Now feature on Scottish Crime Writers". Archived from the original on 6 June 2008 . Retrieved 27 May 2008. The third and final chapter of this series, The Chessmen, takes Fin on an investigation to solve an illegal game-hunting crime that reunites him with a face of his past, Whistler Macaskill, and leads him to discover pieces of the past that could destroy the future. The Enzo Files

Coffin Road starts off great but never got to be the hit I had expected the book to be. But thanks to Peter May's great milieu descriptions and his excellent way of writing makes the book readable!

ENTRY ISLAND wins French Literary Award

As a mark of their respect for his work, the Chinese Crime Writers' Association made him an honorary member of their Beijing Chapter. He is the only Westerner to receive this honour. [7] He has also contributed a monthly column to the Chinese Police Magazine Contemporary World Police. [7] The second character we meet is a tattooed, hair-dyed, pierced, loud-music-blasting teen girl. She's self destructive (which according to the author is the only reason why one would get tattoos and piercings) because her daddy died. Or vanished, to be precise.

Funnily enough - because it is so unexpected - is that his book is mostly about the importance of bees and how modern pesticides kill hem. To not spoil anything I will not reveal exactly how bees tie the plot together, but they do. May touches on some interesting and very topical themes: the importance of bees in the world’s ecosystems; the devastating effect of reputedly harmless pesticides; the power of the large, multi-national agrochemical companies; and the concealment of unfavourable research results. May’s love of the Outer Hebrides is apparent in his wonderfully evocative descriptions: “…I can see the rain falling from it in dark streaks that shift between smudges of grey-blue light and occasional flashes of watery sunshine that burn in brief patches of polished silver on the surface of the sea” Coffin Road by Peter May is another brilliant thriller by this author! Gripping and intense with a fast paced and definitely intriguing plot, I was fascinated by the storyline. I loved the previous standalone, Runaway and when I saw this one was coming out, knew I had to read it. Highly recommended. And then of course when she discovers that he’s got the memory loss, it’s almost then a reverse situation, it’s like being with a stranger. If you’re with somebody that you know well then you’re totally at ease, you know them and they know you, you kind of have shorthand for your relationship. But when the other person has lost their memory and doesn’t know you, then in a way you’ve totally lost touch with them and you don’t know them anymore either. The persona of this guy that she knew was an artificial one anyway, but he doesn’t know that. So it’s endlessly complex that way.

If you like the sound of Coffin Road, you may also enjoy Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy. We reviewed the final book in that set – The Chessmen – in 2013 and you can read the article here. Coffin Road is released 14 January. For the most part the characters are new, though the island copper does make a return appearance. This time the story focuses on a man who stumbles from the sea one wild and windy night. He’s soaked through, desperately cold and somewhat beaten up. Moreover, he can’t remember what happened to him or even who he is; he’s lost all memory of his history and his identity. As the story develops we get to experience his reactions to his circumstances real-time and through his eyes. It’s pretty well done, though I couldn’t help wondering why he remembered how to do certain things yet was he was unable to recall any details at all regarding his life to date. Is loss of memory this selective? Maybe, but I found it a bit distracting.

Deanstons Scottish Crime Book of the Year [31] Entry Island won the Deanstons Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in Stirling September 2014. She had gone from being Daddy’s little girl to Mother’s nightmare in twenty-four short months. A deliberate decision.”One man is dead. A second man is presumed dead. A third man is alive but has no memory and no record of his true identity. Two of these men have bee stings. A teenaged girl wants to know more about her father and embarks, alone, on a perilous journey for answers. A non-profit director rages and threatens. A detective sergeant keeps an open mind and takes copious notes. And all the while, a squatter watches through binoculars. The Killing Room (Hodder & Stoughton 2001), (St Martin's Press 2008) (Poisoned Pen Press 2009), (Quercus E-books 2012), (Riverrun 2016) I particularly liked the man who washed up on the beach with no memory. A man who apparently called himself Neal but who—as he sets about rediscovering his life—now realises he was a fraud. And perhaps worse. Neal’s our main narrator and perhaps that’s why I identified most with him. I’m not sure of the scientific veracity of Neal’s memory loss as described in the novel (as dissociative amnesia), but it was interesting that he remembered how to do many things without knowing how he knew how to do them. If that makes sense. He does seem to be on good terms with the neighbouring couple, even forgetting he is having an affair with the woman, Sally, who is keen to carry things on, and despite not remembering, soon takes Sally to bed. The Enzo Files is a series of five novels with one on the way. The series tell the story of Enzo Macleod, a half-Scottish, half-Italian former forensic scientist that is forced to use his skills once again to solve old cold-cases in France. In the first novel of this series, Extraordinary People (also published as Dry Bones) Enzo is sent on a disturbing scavenger hunt for body parts around France.

The light at Luskentyre is stunning. The wind is brisk but soft. The land has soaked up everything thrown at it last night by the storm. It has, it seems, an endless capacity to do so. The sky presents itself in torn strips of blue interspersed by teased-out cotton wool, and the sun reflects in countless shades of turquoise across an outgoing tide that leaves silver sands shining” Well, let’s wrap it up and bring in still another extraneous being. Is he a “traveler?” Why, no! He’s the one who has been watching out for Neal or whatever his name is all of this time. And he’s a bird watcher, too. a b c d "Shots Magazine Interview with Peter May". Shotsmag.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 May 2008 . Retrieved 27 May 2008. Detective Sergeant George Gunn has been assigned to investigate the discovery of a body on the Flannan Isles. He does not know the man's identity, who killed him or why, and begins an investigation that seems to have absolutely no clues. Coffin Road is the eighth stand-alone novel by British author, Peter May. A man wakes, washed up on a beach on the isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides: he doesn’t know who he is, where he is, or how he got there, but he has an overpowering feeling of dread about something that has happened. Instinctively, he does not reveal his amnesia to those around him, relying on the information he gleans from conversations and from items in his cottage to gain knowledge of who he is.

All 3 characters of the story eventually become interwined, and it was overall an entertaining read, and I did like the ending and came to like the characters, but a lot of the first half was slow, and it took me a while to warm to Neal, who I did like by the end, but it still didn't make up for a long first half, nonetheless its still worth a read. On top of that, there is an underlying environmental issue. I did feel a bit hit over the head with facts, and while the drama was believable, I definitely felt a bit as if I were being given lessons. There are better ways to introduce information to a reader than to have one character explaining things to another. His neighbours know him as Neal Maclean, a writer who is almost finished a book about three lighthouse keepers gone missing from the Flannan Isles in 1900. It soon becomes apparent to him that this is a cover, but for what? A boat trip to one of the Flannan Isles, Eilean Mor, leads to a discovery that explains the dread, and has him wondering if he is a murderer.