Name: The Lewis Man
Rating: 5 (0 reviews)
Author: Peter May

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times raved: "Peter May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." Among the many honors received, The Blackhouse, the first novel in May's acclaimed Lewis trilogy, won the Barry and Crime Thriller Hound awards.

In The Lewis Man, the second book of the trilogy, Fin Macleod has returned to the Isle of Lewis, the storm-tossed, wind-scoured outer Hebridean island where he was born and raised. Having left behind his adult life in Edinburgh - including his wife and his career in the police force - the former Detective Inspector is intent on repairing past relationships and restoring his parents' derelict cottage.

His plans are interrupted when an unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog. The only clue to its identity is a DNA match to a local farmer, the now-senile Tormod Macdonald - the father of Fin's childhood sweetheart, Marsaili - a man who has claimed throughout his life to be an only child, practically an orphan. Reluctantly drawn into the investigation, Fin uncovers deep family secrets even as he draws closer to the killer who wishes to keep them hidden.

Already an international bestseller and winner of numerous awards, including France's Prix des Lecteurs du Telegramme, The Lewis Man has the lyrical verve of Ian Rankin and the gutsy risk-taking of Benjamin Black. As fascinating and forbidding as the Hebridean landscape, the book (according to The Times) "throbs with past and present passions, jealousies, suspicions and regrets; the emotional secrets of the bleak island are even deeper than its peat bog."

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Media Reviews

"Starred Review. The fast-moving investigation sweeps Fin across the starkly beautiful Hebridean landscape into unexpected byways, back into the darker chapters of Scotland's past, as well as his own - and smack into some very present danger." - Publishers Weekly

"Despite some well-judged surprises, the mystery isn't all that mysterious. But you'll keep turning the pages anyway - not to learn whodunit, but to find out what's going to happen to the present-day characters so deeply, fatally rooted in the past." - Kirkus

"As good as its superb predecessor... not only a good mystery, but also a moving and evocative portrayal of a place where the unforgiving weather is matched only by the church's harsh patronage." - The Guardian (UK)

"Every bit as excellent as The Blackhouse... Peter May weaves his wonderful magic and the story unfolds before you in vivid detail." - Eurocrime (UK)

"[The] plot throbs with past and present passions, jealousies, suspicions and regrets; the emotional secrets of the bleak island are even deeper than its peat bog." - The Times (UK)

"The strength and beauty of this book lies in the exploration of the relationships between people...The plot is intricate and cleverly fitted together...May is currently unveiling a cracking series." - CrimeSquad (UK)

"The depiction of the island atmosphere is as impressive as the action." - The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

"Like all the best crime fiction its interest is not restricted to the investigation... the scenes set in the orphanage in the Dean Village are moving... crime novels may be primarily entertainments, but the best ones always offer something more." - The Scotsman

"May is a masterful story-teller. He skillfully combines pathos and the themes of identity, lost love and family ties to create an exciting, page-turning thriller." - The Irish Examiner

This information about The Lewis Man was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

excellent Scottish crime trilogy
The Lewis Man is the second book in the Lewis Trilogy by award-winning British journalist and author, Peter May. Ten months on from losing his young son to a hit-and-run, Fin Macleod has quit his police job, divorced his wife of fourteen years, and is back on the Isle of Lewis, renovating the derelict white house on his late parents’ croft. Will he stay? Uncertain.

He’s tentatively connecting with Fionnlagh, the teenaged son he didn’t know he had (although he feels the same is unlikely with his first love, Marsaili, the young man’s widowed mother), when DS George Gunn brings puzzling news. A young man’s body, the victim of a brutal attack, has been uncovered in the local peat bog.

This corpse, though, was not buried hundreds of years ago, but perhaps less than sixty, and DNA indicates a sibling relationship to Tormod Macdonald, father of Marsaili. The match makes the old man the prime and only suspect, but Tormod always claimed to be an only child, and now has rapidly deteriorating dementia, which will make identifying the body a challenge.

While Gunn and Marsaili feel that anything Tormod tells them can’t be relied upon, Fin believes that the old man’s scattered recollections and fragments of memory are probably accurate, and that he would have no reason to lie. He regards what seem to be irrational ravings as potential clues and, with a somewhat reluctant Gunn, follows up on them to make a startling discovery.

Before the truth is revealed, there are trips to Eriskay and Edinburgh, to a tiny seaside village with an unusual church, and chats with a genealogist, an archivist, a former orphanage inmate, and a well-known Edinburgh crime figure. The friction between Catholic and Protestant, the “homers” taken from orphanages and often forced into slave labour, the traditional knitting patterns of Eriskay, and a St Christopher medal, all play significant parts.

May employs twin narratives to tell the story: Fin’s details present day events while Tormod recalls incidents from his youth, six decades earlier. As always, May’s gorgeous descriptive prose evokes the rugged beauty of his setting: “All along the ragged coastline, the sea sucked and frothed and growled, tireless legions of riderless white horses crashing up against the stubborn stone of unyielding black cliffs.” is one example.

Another: “The sky was black and blue, brooding, contused, rolling in off the ocean low and unbroken. The first spits of rain were smeared across his windscreen by the intermittent passage of its wipers. The pewter of the ocean itself was punctuated by the whites of breaking waves ten or fifteen feet high, and the solitary blue flashing light of the police car next to the ambulance was swallowed into insignificance by the vastness of the landscape.” The third instalment of this excellent Scottish crime trilogy, The Chessmen, is eagerly anticipated.

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Author Information

Biography
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Peter May Author Biography

Photo: Domi Photographe

Peter May won the Scottish Young Journalist of the Year Award at the age of 21, and had his first novel published at 26. He then left journalism and became one of Scotland's most successful and prolific television dramatists. By the age of 30 he had created two major TV series, The Standard and Squadron, for the British television network, the BBC. He went on to gather more than 1000 TV credits in fifteen years, creating and writing major drama serials for both BBC and ITV in the UK: including the ground-breaking Gaelic serial Machair, which he also produced.

Returning now to novels, the six novels in his outstanding China Thrillers series have won critical acclaim. To research the series, Peter May makes annual trips to China. With an extraordinary network of contacts, he ...

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