The Blackhouse

May’s murder mystery, the first of the Lewis Island Trilogy, expertly captures the mood of his policeman protagonist and the similar somber atmosphere of the Scottish island where he grew up, and to which he has returned to investigate a murder. While you think you are learning details from the hero’s youth on Lewis Island you realize this expert rendering of place and past is actually woven like a fine Harris tweed and contains clues to the murder.

The Black House is a Scottish-based mystery featuring the remote Hebridean island of Lewis. I loved how May captures the essence of this island in this trilogy and uses actual historical and cultural events to weave the plot. Each of the Scottish Isles has its own unique culture, and I love how May explores this through the interactions between the characters from Lewis and mainland Scotland. 

I also really enjoyed the character arc and the prodigal-son-esque storyline of jaded detective Fin Macleod returning home. As he solves the murders, he has to face his own dark past.  

I'm always looking for novels that will carry me to distant and remote places, especially those I'm not likely to visit any other way. Peter May does this in this beautifully written book set in Scotland's Outer Hebrides.

This is a story of loneliness and regrets shaped and intensified by life on the isolated archipelago. The sense of place is especially vivid in chapters set on the hard-to-reach rock known as Sula Sgeir island. Few people are permitted there because it's a breeding ground for endangered gannets. But each year, a select group of locals is allowed to make camp… show more.

Set in the harsh northern region of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, May is masterful in his description of the Gaelic culture and terrain, and while I’ve never been, I can imagine it as if I’d just unpacked my bags at the local inn.

May could just as easily teach a master class in prose, effortlessly employing first and third person interchangeably (first for the past, third for present-day)—something I've never seen done before. It could come across as gimmicky, but in May’s skillful hands, it simply comes across as brilliant.

In The Blackhouse set on the Isle of Lewis, some small islands north of Scotland. Honestly, I think I felt the bleakness and the cold reading this. DI Fin Macleod must return to his birthplace and confront all the demons he left behind. In the process, he discovers he has a son. He also discovers that if he hadn't gone back, he would never have known how much someone there wanted him dead. I love a good atmospheric novel and the use of place and weather as a character.