The Black Loch (Book Review)

 

The Black Loch (The Lewis Trilogy, Book 4)
by Peter May

Audio book narrated by Peter Forbes (11 hrs and 29 mins). The audiobook also includes an audio-exclusive conversation between Peter May (author) and Peter Forbes (narrator).

This book re-introduces detective Fin Macleod from May's Lewis trilogy (The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man and The Chess Men, 2009-2013).

When the body of an 18 year old young woman is found on a remote beach on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, it seems unlikely that she died by accident. When it turns out that she was having an affair with Fin's son, Fionnlagh Macleod (a teacher at the institute where she was a student), Fionnlagh becomes the prime suspect in her murder. This brings Fin and Marsaili back to the island to try and find out more about the situation, and hopefully clear their son's name. Of course things take an unexpected turn or two along the way; and the case also turns out to have connections back to Fin's own teenage years...

As usual, Peter Forbes' narration of the audio book is excellent; and the conversation between him and Peter May included at the end was very enjoyable as well. I gathered from their talk that Forbes has now recorded all of May's books.

I first read the Lewis trilogy back in 2012-13, and since then I think I've also read/listened to (and enjoyed) most of the author's standalones published after that - most of them as audio books. (I have not caught up with his earlier books though.) 

If you haven't yet read the Lewis Trilogy, I recommend that you do that before you read this one.

A Winter Grave - (Audio) Book Review

  

Peter May's new book is set a few decades into the future from now (2051); with some "flashbacks" to our own time. It starts with a young meteorologist (female) discovering the body of a man entombed in ice when she's checking a mountain top weather station in Scotland. A detective from Glasgow, Cameron Brodie, volunteers to go up there to investigate the murder case. He has his own private reasons for choosing to embark on this hazardous mission. As readers, we get to know what they are - but his superiors don't...

The futuristic setting serves to assume that climate changes have kept progressing since our own time, and also that technology has kept being developed a bit further. No so much as to seem really unrealistic, though. The story involves a sort of automatic AI helicopter (a programmed air taxi without a pilot aboard), and also a new kind of 'virtual reality' glasses (looking like normal ones, so their multi-functions not obvious to everyone). 

Brodie's personal interest in the case turns out to go deeper than he even suspected himself, and the story of course takes several twists and turns before the end. Suspense is kept up throughout, and at the same time we also get vivid images of the landscape and climate in which it is set. 

I chose to get this book as audio book, as I know from previous listening experience that Peter Forbes is a superb narrator of Peter May's stories - and especially those set in Scotland. His dialect enhances the impression of "being there".

Book Review – Runaway by Peter May

Runaway
*****
by Peter May (2014)

'… where did they all go, Dave?'
’The years. The dreams.' He turned a pale smile towards the other man. 'I never thought I'd be old, Dave. Never felt old. Not really. Always just a boy in my head. Until now.'

Like the previous books by Peter May that I have read (The Lewis Trilogy and Entry Island), this one too tells a story from the double perspective of the past vs. the present. The main narrator is Jack, born shortly after World War II, and growing up in Glasgow in the fifties and sixties. Back in 1965, he and four friends (like so many teens back then inspired by The Beatles) started a band, and in pursuit of a musical career ended up running away from their homes in Glasgow, to seek their fortune in London. Three of them returned after rather a short time away. (Remember how a few weeks seemed to last so much longer back in one's teens than they do decades later??) Two of them did not.

50 years later, in 2015, memories of their adventures back then catch up with Jack and the two old friends in Glasgow with whom he is still in touch. A piece of news read by one of them (Maurie) in the paper, about a recent murder in London, makes it necessary (Maurie insists) that the three of them retrace their steps and go back there. This time, it's not their parents they have to secretly run away from, but their children… However, to go through with it, they do need a younger chauffeur and assistant; and Jack manages to persuade (or trick) his grandson into accompanying them.

Their present day journey south to London turns out as adventurous as the one back in their youth. It becomes a mix of ”road movie”, nostalgia and insights. Peter May manages to capture the spirit of the times perfectly – both the past and the present. His use of language to paint mental images is just superb. Possibly it helps even further for me, though, that my own teen years weren't that far behind (and the general spirit of the early 70s not so different from the mid 60s) – and I also have my own memories of Britain from around back then; both from travelling with my own family, and one month spent living with an English family in Yorkshire (in 1972).

Besides the Kindle e-book I also bought the Audible version of this book (as I only had to pay a few dollars extra for that). The superb narration by Peter Forbes in Scottish accent added even more to the reading experience. (It was just a little bit annoying to find that the ”whispersync” with this book only worked one way, though. The audio book picked up where I was on the Kindle; but the Kindle did not pick up how far I'd listened to the audio. However, it was not too difficult to sort that out manually.)

All in all, I was ”swept away” by this book and really enjoyed it. The murder mystery in the background serves to keep the story together and link the past to the present; but it is really the characters, and the reflections about the passage of time and the role the memories of our youth still plays in our old age that will stick in my mind from this book, I think.

Book Review: Entry Island by Peter May

Entry Island by Peter May (2014)
*****

If you liked Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy (The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man and The Chessmen), I think you will most probably enjoy Entry Island as well. This too is a detective novel, but with different characters, and set mainly on another island, in another part of the world: Entry Island, belonging to the Madeleine Islands in the French-speaking province of Quebec in Canada. However, the population on Entry Island (less than 130 people) forms an isolated English-speaking community.

Which is why, when a murder takes place on Entry Island, the police team sent there from Quebec, includes Sime Mackenzie (Sime pronounced Sheem; a Scottish variety of the name Simon), fluent in both languages: English as well as French. One of the other members of the team is his ex-wife, Marie-Ange.

The murder victim is a man named Cowell, who lived on the island; and one of the main suspects is his wife Kirsty. When Sime first meets her, he is struck by a weird feeling of recognition, for which he can’t find any logical explanation.

Sime suffers from insomnia since his divorce, and the few hours he manages to doze off at all are filled with weird dreams. On Entry Island, not only does Kirsty Cowell pursue him even into his dreams, but the dreams also become mixed up with memories of stories he was told in his childhood, about his ancestor who emigrated to Canada from the Hebredian Isle of Lewis in the mid 1800s.

Throughout the novel, the perspective shifts between the contemporary murder investigation, and a diary kept by Simes ancestor (by the same name), who grew up on the Isle of Lewis as the son of a crofter.

While I loved the double or triple layers of mystery as such, to begin with I found myself questioning the old diary entries. Did they not seem a bit too detailed and modern in narrative style?

Then I remembered Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Charles Dickens; and decided to give up that line of criticism and just enjoy the story!

Reaching the end, I really could not find any reason to give this book any less than five stars. There is a depth to Peter May’s storytelling (in this novel as well as in the Lewis trilogy) that goes way past being just entertainment for the moment. These books leave me with a feeling of having “been somewhere”, rather than just having read about it.