The Lewis Man is the second book in Peter May’s wonderful Lewis Trilogy and in the words of The Guardian it is…..
“As good as its predecessor…not only a good mystery, but also a moving and evocative portrayal of a place where the weather is matched only by the church’s harsh patronage….”
The place is the Isles of Lewis, from the book’s prologue….
On this storm lashed island three hours off the northwest coast of Scotland, what little soil exists gives the people their food and their heat. It also takes their dead. And very occasionally, as today, gives one up.
The body that it gave up is that of a nineteen year old male found in a peat bog during the annual peat harvest. The body is a typical bog body, Bodies found in peat bogs are sometimes perfectly preserved, retaining their skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of the surrounding area. These bodies sometimes are thousands of years old! In this case it is the body of a nineteen year old boy, who was brutally murdered. He stabbed several times and had hos throat slit! The Elvis tatoo on his forearm though squashed any theories that the body was centuries old. Since the bodies internal organs were intact DNA was used to help determine who the boy was. Matched against DNA of male islanders (samples had been collected and tested a year prior see The Blackhouse) a match was found – Tormod MacDonald. Tormod is the father of Marsaili, the childhood sweetheart of Fin MacLeod. MacLeod is a recently retired Edinburgh police detective who has returned to Lewis to restore his family croft and maybe some personal relationships. Tormod suffers from dementia and lives in a hazy world of past and present. Soon Fin and Marsaili are on a quest to find out who the bog boy was and how and why he was murdered. The story of the murdered boy is told through the haze of Tormod’s dementia, as Tormod tells a tale of two brothers, neither of whom Marsaili or other Lewis residents have any knowledge of, and reveals long lost and buried secrets that change everything Marsaili thought about her past and ancestry! Last week, my wife sent the Facebook challenge to me to list 10 books that have stayed with me, The Blackhouse should have been included on that list and now The Lewis Man should be among those books also! As the quote at the beginning of this post says, the book is not only a good mystery that is not unraveled until the close of the book, but also a wonderful portrayal of the harsh lives of the MacDonalds, MacLeods, Murrays and other families who live in the harsh environment found on the Isle of Lewis. Scotsman Peter May now lives and writes in France. I have read several of his China Thrillers that feature Beijing detective Li Yan and American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell and they are also great reads. I have yet to read any of the books in his other series The Enzo Files which feature a Scottish forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod, but I should!! The Lewis Man has won…
- the Prix des Lecteurs of Le Télégramme newspaper in France, a 10,000 Euro prize judged by readers of the newspaper
- the Prix des Lecteurs 2012 at Les Ancres Noires Festival, Le Havre, France.
- the 2012 Prix International at the Polar&Co Festival, Cognac, France.
and was shortlisted for…
- the UK Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award for 2012
- the Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2012
- the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime novel of the Year 2013
So if you have never read a Peter May book grab a copy of The Blackhouse, I do believe you will be moving quickly on to The Lewis Man!! (Book 24 for 2014) (Grade 4.5 out of 5.0)