The Blackhouse: Book One of the Lewis Trilogy

by Peter May

Peter Forbes (Narrator)

The Isle of Lewis is the most remote, harshly beautiful place in Scotland, where the difficulty of existence seems outweighed only by people's fear of God. But older, pagan values lurk beneath the veneer of faith, the primal yearning for blood and revenge. When a brutal murder on the island bears the hallmarks of a similar slaying in Edinburgh, police detective Fin Macleod is dispatched north to investigate. But since he himself was raised on Lewis, the investigation also represents a journey home and into his past. Each year the island's men perform the hunting of the gugas, a savage custom no longer necessary for survival, but which they cling to even more fiercely in the face of the demands of modern morality. For Fin the hunt recalls a horrific tragedy, which after all this time may have begun to demand another sacrifice. The Blackhouse is a crime novel of rare power and vision. Peter May has crafted a page-turning murder mystery that explores the darkness in our souls, and just how difficult it is to escape the past.

• ISBN10: 1849163847
• ISBN13: 9781849163842
• Publish Date: 3 February 2011
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 11 June 2014
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Quercus Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[viking2917]

Fin Macleod is a brooding, impulsive detective, investigating a horrific murder in Edinburgh, and recovering (or not) from the death of his 8 year old son and the unraveling of his marriage.

Word comes from the isle of Lewis in the northernmost Hebrides of a similar murder, and Fin is sent back to the island where he grew up, suffered a number of tragedies, and has only returned once in 20 years.

Fin is the main character, but the Isle of Lewis, perhaps most famous for the viking Lewis chess set discovered there, might as well be. Cold and hostile, you can feel the wind howling across the machair (the peat fields), smell the peat fires burning, and ride the mountainous seas that the Islanders cross for the annual pilgrimage to An Sgeir, a barren, rocky cliff/island, where the Guga birds are slaughtered for the annual feast.

The Blackhouse is named for the ancient rock houses that dot the island, mostly now ruins rather than a place to live. The book is long, but revelations come hard and fast the entire book, each a bit darker than the previous one, until the book crashes on the events that transpired, then and now, on An Sgeir. May captures the casual cruelties of children and how those resonate throughout a lifetime.
Between revelations we're treated to May's gorgeous prose that captures the look, the feel, the smell and the cold of Lewis.

You're in for a treat.