The Blackhouse: The Lewis Trilogy (The Lewis Trilogy, 1) - Softcover

May, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849163863 ISBN 13: 9781849163866

Publisher: Quercus, 2014

Synopsis

A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith. A MURDER. Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past. A SECRET. Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister. A TRAP. As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter May was born and raised in Scotland. He was an award-winning journalist at the age of twenty-one and a published novelist at twenty-six. He is the million-selling author of the Lewis trilogy, the Enzo Files and the China thrillers; and of the Sunday Times bestselling standalone novels Entry Island, Runaway and Coffin Road. Peter now lives in South-West france with his wife, writer Janice Hally.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Scottish novelist May (whose series include the Enzo Files, starring a Scottish forensic scientist working in France) starts a projected trilogy, again with a Scottish sleuth, with a shotgun blast of a debut. Two bodies are found hanging from trees: one in Edinburgh, the other on the Isle of Lewis, the most northerly isle in the Outer Hebrides. Edinburgh cop Fin Macleod, originally from Lewis, is assigned to the case for no more reason than that he speaks Gaelic. Two narratives vie with each other. One involves Macleod’s struggles with confronting people whom he left behind years ago. The other, which eventually informs the first, is Macleod’s first-person memories of his life on the island. The reader knows that Macleod, against all odds, overcame poverty and bad schooling to win a spot at the University of Glasgow and that he threw it all away in his sophomore year and became a cop, a decision he’s regretted ever since. The two narratives are brilliantly executed until they converge in an absolute stunner of an ending. The isolation and desolation of Lewis is an apt metaphor for Macleod. For once in crime fiction, a detective confronting demons from his past is not merely a stock plot device. May gives it an urgency that, by novel’s end, makes perfect sense. A gripping plot, pitch-perfect characterization, and an appropriately bleak setting drive this outstanding series debut. --Connie Fletcher

About this edition

• Publisher: Quercus
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1849163863
• ISBN 13: 9781849163866
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 501