Showing results by author "Peter May" in All Categories

When a grisly murder occurs on the Isle of Lewis that bears similarities to a brutal killing on the mainland, Edinburgh detective Fin Macleod is dispatched to the Outer Hebrides to investigate, embarking at the same time on a voyage into his own troubled past. As Fin reconnects with the people and places of his tortured childhood, the beautiful island and its ancient customs once again begin to assert their grip on his psyche. Every step toward solving the case brings Fin closer to a confrontation with the dark events of the past that shaped - and nearly destroyed - his life.

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.

When Fin Macleod catches up with elusive poacher and former childhood friend Whistler Macaskill, the two witness a freak natural phenomenon - a bog burst - that drains a loch of all its water in a flash, revealing a mud-encased light aircraft with a sickeningly familiar moniker on its side. Both men immediately know what they will find inside: the body of Roddy Mackenzie, a friend whose flight disappeared more than 17 years earlier. But when Whistler's face appears to register something other than shock, an icy chill of apprehension overtakes Fin.

The body of Gil Petty, America's most celebrated wine critic, is found strung up in a French Gaillac vineyard, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine. For forensic expert Enzo Macleod, the key to this unsolved murder lies in decoding Petty's mysterious reviews, which could make or break a vineyard's reputation. As he digs deeper for the motivation behind the shocking crime, Macleod finds that beneath the tranquil façade of French viticulture lurks a back-stabbing community characterized by a deadly rivalry.

A young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station in Kinlochleven discovers the body of a missing man entombed in ice. Cameron Brodie, a Glasgow detective, sets out on a hazardous journey to the isolated and ice-bound village. He has his own reasons for wanting to investigate a murder case so far from his beat. Brodie must face up to the ghosts of his past and to a killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that his investigation threatens to expose.

Lovers and business partners Niamh and Ruairidh are owners of a small Hebridean company, Ranish Tweed. Their fabrics have become internationally sought-after in the world of fashion. But the threads of their relationship are beginning to fray. As they prepare for an important showing at a Parisian fabric fair, Niamh accuses Ruairidh of having an affair with a Russian fashion designer they work with - a fight that ends with Ruairidh storming off. Moments later, Niamh watches in horror as the car containing her life partner explodes in a ball of flame. With Niamh a prime suspect in the murder, the Parisian police hound her....

Half-Scottish, half-Italian Enzo MacLeod used to be one of the top forensics experts in Scotland, and now he lives in Toulouse, working as a university professor. Divorced in Scotland and widowed in France, he has an estranged Scottish daughter and a French daughter he has raised by himself. As if his life isn't complicated enough, he soon finds himself unexpectedly on the hunt for solutions to some vexing cold cases thanks to an ill-advised wager about the power of forensic science.

A man stands bewildered on a deserted beach on the Hebridean Isle of Harris. He cannot remember who he is. The only clue to his identity is a folded map of a path named the Coffin Road. He does not know where this search will take him. A detective from Lewis sits aboard a boat, filled with doubt. DS George Gunn knows that a bludgeoned corpse has been discovered on a remote rock 20 miles offshore. He does not know if he has what it takes to uncover how and why.

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....

Living again of the Isle of Lewis, the ex-detective inspector Fin McLeod is working as a security officer for a local landowner. While investigating illegal activity on the estate, Fin encounters elusive poacher and former childhood friend Whistler Macaskill. But while Fin catches up with Whistler, the two witness a freak natural phenomenon - a "bog burst" - that spontaneously drains a loch of its water, revealing a mud-encased light aircraft with a sickeningly familiar moniker on its side.

Seven years ago, France's top chef, Marc Fraysse, summoned the world's culinary press to his remote restaurant in central France to make an announcement that he said would cause shockwaves in the culinary community. Instead of an announcement, the reporters were shocked to find instead that the great chef had been murdered, and they left without a clue about the message the chef intended to deliver or who might have killed him.

In an elegant apartment in Paris, forensic expert Enzo Macleod, now 56 years old, pores over the scant evidence of the sixth and final cold case he has been challenged to solve. The most obvious suspect is Régis Blanc, a former pimp already imprisoned for the murders of three sex workers, who may have been Lucie's lover in the months before her disappearance.

Glasgow, 1965. Headstrong teenager Jack Mackay cannot allow for even the possibility of a life of predictability and routine. The 17-year-old has just one destination on his mind - London - and successfully convinces his four friends and fellow bandmates to join him in abandoning their homes to pursue a goal of musical stardom.

London is in lockdown under martial law. A hospital is being urgently built by the river Thames to contain the thousands of victims of a flu-like epidemic. Construction is brought to a sudden halt when a leather holdall containing the bones of a child is unearthed from the rubble. A psychopath has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. But why are he and his handlers determined to go to such murderous lengths to hide the origins of the body?

When Detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light aircraft at Montreal's St. Hubert airfield, he does so without looking back. For Sime, the 850-mile journey ahead represents an opportunity to escape the bitter blend of loneliness and regret that has come to characterise his life in the city. Travelling as part of an eight-officer investigation team, Sime's destination lies in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Only two kilometres wide and three long, Entry Island is home to a population of around 130 inhabitants - the wealthiest of which has just been discovered murdered in his home.

The body of eighteen-year-old TV personality Kathleen is found abandoned on a remote beach at the head of An Loch Dubh - the Black Loch - on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. A swimmer and canoeist, it is inconceivable that she could have drowned. Fin Macleod left the island ten years earlier to escape its memories. When he learns that his married son Fionnlagh had been having a clandestine affair with the dead girl and is suspected of her murder, he and Marsaili return to try and clear his name.

The Chinese police have once more been forced to enlist the services of American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell, this time to investigate a series of four horrific ritual executions in Beijing. Detective Li Yan is determined to discover just how one of the victims in particular, an American diplomat, became caught up in the slaying. And he is arguably even more determined to have nothing to do with Campbell, whom he finds simultaneously too foreign and too... familiar. The personal polarity that once attracted Yan and Campbell again strengthens their professional partnership.

A classic early Peter May novel situated among the political intrigue of 1979. Expecting to find only a difficult, dreary political investigation in Belgium, Bannerman has barely settled in when tragedy strikes. His host, a fellow journalist, along with a British Cabinet minister, are discovered dead in the minister's elegant Brussels townhouse. It appears that they have shot each other. But the dead journalist's young autistic daughter, Tania, was hidden in a closet during the killings.

His victims are young, beautiful, and coldly mutilated. He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. Li Yan, head of Beijing's serious crime squad, must stop him. Just as pathologist Margaret Campbell finds an insight into the killer's cruel signature, Li receives a letter from the killer, betraying his cruel intentions. There's no way Li can misinterpret the Ripper's motives: He wants to tear Li and Campbell's lives apart, and write the darkest chapter in Beijing's history.

A grotesquely burned corpse found in a city park is a troubling mystery for Beijing detective Li Yan. Yan, devoted to his career as a means of restoring the respect his family lost during the Cultural Revolution, needs outside help if he is to break the case. The unidentified cadaver in turn provides a welcome distraction for forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell. Campbell, married to her work and having left America and her broken past behind, throws herself into the investigation and before long uncovers a bizarre anomaly.