A MAN WITH NO NAME. An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer. A MAN WITH NO MEMORY. But this islander, Tormod Macdonald - now an elderly man suffering from dementia - has always claimed to be an only child. A MAN WITH NO CHOICE. When Tormod's family approach Fin Macleod for help, Fin feels duty-bound to solve the mystery.
Peter May can write like nobody's business. The setting for The Lewis Man is, unsurprisingly, the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides. May's prose is a deft as a paintbrush and you'll feel the piercing wind, the startlingly bright sun and clouds, feel the sand of the freezing beaches under your feet.
His characters are amazing - Fin is the lead, who we first met in The Blackhouse, but I was most drawn to May's rendering of Tormod, an old man suffering from dementia, and his rendering captures what I think it must be like. really amazing.
And all the characters wrapped in a deftly plotted mystery involving a man buried in the peat and preserved like Tollund Man or the other peat men of history.
