I imagine this book was shelved in the Crime section in many bookstores when it appeared. But it transcends that genre, in which a detective has to discover whodunnit. In The Blackhouse, the puzzle is more complex, and there are several discoveries in the course of the narrative, resulting in the final reveal, in which the detective uncovers a long-suppressed truth about himself.

The detective, Fin McLeod of the Edinburgh force, is foundering when the book opens. His eight-year-old boy had been killed in a hit-and-run four weeks earlier. His wife feels emotionally abandoned. He’s been on bereavement leave since the tragedy, but his supervisor is getting impatient. It’s no secret that Fin is trying for a degree from Open University; his commitment to remaining in police work seems minimal. We’re told it offers “his only means of escape.” From what, we ask, then learn as the story unfolds that escape has been Fin’s constant quest.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Fin’s troubles go further back. The catalyst to reveal this is a murder on his home island, Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. The Holmes crime database, used by the UK police to track possible serial killers, suggests sending him to the scene since he had led the investigation of an unsolved murder in Edinburgh with some similarities.

He resists the assignment. His memories of home are unpleasant (although it turns out that it’s what he doesn’t remember that is the real kicker). As a youth, he was impatient to leave and never return. He’s sent nonetheless on the assumption that his local knowledge would give him an edge. But from the moment he touches down in Stornoway, he’s aware that he has become an outsider in the eyes of those he knew, which is how he feels as well. He comments more than once how much he has changed in the years since he left, and the island hasn’t. The second time he said it, I wondered if it was not the other way around.

It doesn’t make it any easier that the victim was in school with him, a bully who made Fin’s life, and the lives of many others, miserable. Only one person mourned his passing, a surprise, given an incident from their school years. This, by the way, was a nice touch, suggesting that the victim had been seen one-dimensionally — scapegoated, even.

The book alternates between chapters that narrate the surface story in the story’s present, narrated in the third person, and chapters that recount past incidents in Fin’s childhood and youth, told in the first person. The cumulative effect is that Fin’s final summer on Lewis, appropriately, contains two initiations —sex and participation in an annual hunting rite to a rocky outcrop fifty miles out to sea. That expedition goes wrong, and leaves Fin’s passage to adulthood stunted.

The Blackhouse grew on me as I read. It begins with a prologue reminiscent of a stereotypical opening of an NCIS episode (cue theme music and credits). The opening chapter was flawed by a long-time television scriptwriter’s habit of using dialogue to inform the audience. Later, the author puts words in his characters’s mouths that don’t seem like something they would say.

There was also a disconnect between the descriptions of the island and what I experienced when I visited Lewis. Much was recognizable, but the adjectives used were uniformly negative. A helpful reminder that the setting of a story is part of the fiction, even if it bears the same name as a place on the map. I came to understand that May’s word choices offered a window into Fin’s spirit. Similar use of uniformly negative adjectives came in any mention of God or the church in Fin’s recollection (even the wooden pews are “unforgiving”) until he recalls the congregation singing Psalms in Gaelic.

The weather is part of the landscape. Nearly every chapter opens with a description of wind and rain, sun and moon. On real-life Lewis, too, one is indeed more conscious of the ever-changing weather, but in the Lewis of the story, it becomes one more malevolent force weighing on Fin.

The first hint that this return to the island might be working a change on Fin is on a drive to Uig, the southern tip of the island, which he calls “some of the bleakest, most beautiful country anywhere on earth.” Significantly, the next chapter begins “in those days,” the first explicit indication that these first-person memories are in the past. And in the chapter after that, Fin tells his namesake, Finnleigh, “You might not think so now, but this is a magical place. . . . The thing is, you don’t appreciate it until you’ve been away.”

The author uses many doublets in his plot, such as sons and incidents of falling. Most effectively, there are two trips to the rock, An Sgeir, for the atavistic annual hunt for gugas, fledgling gannets. Significantly, twelve men go. While there, they not only slaughter them (a reminiscence of lambs) but communally share in eating the first they catch (the rest are taken back to Lewis; what was once a desperately needed food source is now a delicacy). Some make the trip yearly, but even once is enough to transform you into one who has been to the rock.

The first of the two trips, Fin’s abortive initiation, marks the end of his closest childhood friendship. The second, eighteen years later, with its echo of the binding of Isaac, involves Fin as the thirteenth man, who has to surmount dangerous obstacles (an ordeal by water) to reach the rock in time to prevent a human sacrifice. By succeeding, after coming to the self-knowledge long repressed, Fin is left as the book closes with a flicker of hope that he might finally have matured. On the other hand, this is the first time in hundreds of years that not a single guga is brought back. What does that bode for their tradition-bound community? ( )

This isn't so much a whodunnit crime novel or police procedural as more a psychological study of a small island community and especially of the main character, Fin Macleod. Fin is a Detective Inspector who grew up on the island and left to go to university when he was eighteen. He has only been back once, on a brief visit that following year, to attend his aunt's funeral. Now he is sent back to investigate a grisly murder which bears strong resemblance to a crime committed in Edinburgh. Fin's boss is callous and unfeeling about the recent death of Fin's son, and gives him the ultimatum of going back to Lewis or quitting the force. So Fin departs, leaving his marriage to Mona in tatters.

Gradually, through interwoven chapters set in Fin's viewpoint, the reader learns of his tragic history on the island. He had a chequered relationship with a girl who loved him from when they were both six years old, but he treated her badly and they broke up shortly after joining University due to his unforgiveable behaviour. She returned to Lewis straight afterwards. Fin's own return to the island forces him to confront a lot of home truths and even suppressed memories.

The book is very well written with evocative descriptions of the landscape and lifestyle, and vividly realised characters. It is almost unremittingly grim, however, and requires a trigger warning for themes such as child abuse and animal welfare (a key part of the story is the centuries old custom whereby twelve men carry out an annual slaughter of gannet chicks on a remote rock in the sea (legally permitted to gather a delicacy, and in former times an essential addition to the island's food supply). This apparently is a real-life event. Altogether I would rate this at 4 stars. ( )

OOH. Creepy-good. Sense of evil pervading isolated town, check. Fogginess about motives, check. Unputdownable, eventually check.
I started out having difficulty settling into this book as it changed from present to past, reminiscence to reality. But as the story worked on, I found myself inextricably drawn in and tossed about on the waves of discovery and danger. It helped that it was a foggy few days while I read this and my apartment was wreathed in it - but it was one of those books that made me feel uncomfortable without really knowing why...until the shocking denouement.
So worth reading. I felt in the hands of a master as I was taken along. Highly recommended for a stormy few days at the cottage or maybe in the winter, curled in front of a fire. Even if it is sunny when you're reading it, the mists will encompass you. ( )

Originally posted on my blog http://www.csdaley.com/?p=4209

Finding a new author you enjoy reading is always worthy of a happy dance. Finding one whose stories are set in Scotland is justification for dropping to the ground and busting out my mad break dancing skills. Okay, the break dancing isn't true but everything else is. For years Ian Rankin has sat proudly at the top of my favorite mystery writers' list. Rankin's Scotland is a place I could visit again and again.

Now, I am not going to get crazy here and say Peter May is right there with Rankin yet. One book does not make a long steady career of greatness but it was a damn good book. Set in the Isle of Lewis, this is the first book in the Lewis trilogy. The first half of the book is good. The second half of the book is incredible. As in, I know I should be sleeping because I have to work tomorrow but screw it I need to finish, incredible.

The story follows Fin Macleod back to his small hometown to investigate if a murder there is connected to one he is investigating in Edinburgh. The story weaves the current investigation with flashbacks of his troubled childhood. Both stories are powerful but the flashbacks really pack an emotional punch and give the story the momentum and power which will keep you reading well into the night.

Peter May knows how to write people. I believe Fin's torment. Even more impressive is how May uses the setting to push the story forward. I cared about Fin. I wanted to know more about the Isle of Lewis. I am overjoyed there are two more books for me to read. For me this is a must buy for mystery readers who are fans of Ian Rankin or Tana French. Go pick it up and make sure you have cleared a day to read it. You are not going to want to stop.


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This book was an advance reading copy provided by Quercus Book ( )

Välskrivet med fina miljö och karaktärsbeskrivningar. ( )