With the arrival of The Chessmen in bookstores this February, Peter May’s dark and violent trilogy about Fin Macleod, an ex-detective from Edinburgh who returns home to the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, comes to a close. But May’s American beachhead is just beginning. The Glasgow-born writer, who now lives in France, builds a following here, led perhaps by New York Times reviewer Marilyn Stasio, who wrote, “Peter May is an author I’d follow to the ends of the Earth.”
May thinks his trilogy—Blackhouse and The Lewis Man are its other two titles—will find fans in the U.S.
“The Scottish island setting is an exotic one,” he said during a recent interview, “entirely outside the experience of most Americans, while at the same time many people in the United States have connections to Scotland. More than that, however, is what I like to think of as the universality of the stories. Because they are to a large extent an exploration of the human condition, to which people can relate.”
May follows other Scottish writers whose hard-boiled thrillers have crossed the Atlantic—Ian Rankin, Denise Mina, and Val McDermid are prominent examples—but don’t suggest that May is a “Tartan Noir” writer, as these other writers are sometimes labeled.
“I have never liked the term ‘Tartan Noir,’ he said. “It is a specious tabloid creation to lump together a very disparate group of writers who have achieved enormous success. The variety of story and setting, of culture and approach [in these novels] for me defies that kind of easy categorization. I am happy to be thought of a Scottish writer—because I am Scottish, and I write.”
Indeed, the singular viewpoint in May’s stories initially made his books a tough sell.
“The Blackhouse received the best rejection letters I have ever read,” he said. “Every editor loved the book but wouldn’t see where it might fit on their lists. They were, in fact reflecting the essential conservatism of British publishing just after the turn of the century, when all every editor seemed to be looking for was ‘the next Ian Rankin.’”
After The Blackhouse became a success, publishers wanted May to turn it into a series.
“I refused,” May said, “on the basis that the average murder rate on the island was only one per century. Writing a trilogy was the compromise, and in order to retain some sense of realism I had to dig into the past for my crimes.”
May’s decision emerged from the regard for the islanders that was nurtured when he spent the better part of five years on Lewis in the 1990s creating Machair, a TV series performed entirely in Gaelic.
“Islanders, although many of them live hard, are essentially good and honest people,” May said.
And the fact that the trilogy is over, May said, means just that: it’s over.
“In my latest book, there is not an island in sight,” May said. “Runaway is set between Glasgow and London, and between 1965 and 2015. But the book I am currently working on sees a return to the Hebrides—though not to the characters of the trilogy. There will be no more Fin, I’m afraid.”
—Gerald Bartell
Gerald Bartell reviews thrillers for the Washington Post, the Kansas City Star, and the San Francisco Chronicle. His travel writing has appeared in the New York Daily News, AAA Car&Travel, OutTraveler, and many other publications. He has a master’s degree in cinema studies from NYU and in journalism from Penn State.