Although my grandad is a daily reader, and although he and I are very close, our book tastes rarely converge. He enjoys a good legal or military thriller, or some noir crime, and usually bases his choices on the covers at the library. Now and then my mum and aunt buy him a paperback for birthdays or Christmas. The book I want to talk about today - The Blackhouse by Peter May - was this year's birthday book. When I visited him last month it was waiting for me on the dining room table. 'You should read this', he said, and the recommendation was such an unusual thing that I did, almost immediately.
Most of you already know that I only read crime or mystery fiction now and then. It has never been a genre I kept up with, but even I have heard of Peter May and this first installment of his Lewis trilogy. I think it was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick last year. It comes with a strong reputation which it, more or less, lives up to. It introduces Fin Macleod, lately a detective inspector in Edinburgh, who is seconded to work on a murder case on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Highlands. The murder matches the MO of a similar case he has been investigating in Edinburgh: a man has been strangled, disembowelled and then strung up on display. (Ugh.) The similarity of the cases, along with the fact that Fin is a one-time native of Lewis and knew the victim, make him seem the perfect investigator.
But going back to the island he left 18 years ago uncovers troubling memories. Before he left Lewis for good he was a member of a group of islanders who went to the lonely sea-rock called An Sgeir for the yearly 'guga' or gannet chick harvest. What happened there all those years ago continues to haunt him and everyone else involved. The book alternates between the present-day murder investigation and flashbacks to Macleod's difficult past. Both strands are dark and brooding and all of the characters fall onto a spectrum of lonely, repressed or desperate. The only light relief is Macleod's self-appointed sidekick, Sgt George Gunn, whose sole purpose is to be solid, uncomplicated and loyal.
The evocation of place and May's descriptive writing is superb. The central set piece of the guga hunt on An Sgeir is mesmerising, and Lewis emerges in all its elemental shape-shifting glory. If the landscape were less impressive, then the writing would be overblown but as it is the pitch is right and the atmosphere is wonderful.
An Sgeir lay along a line that ran approximately south-east to north-west. The towering spine of the rock dropped from its highest point in the south to a bleached curve of two-hundred-foot cliffs at the north end, like a shoulder set against the prevailing weather of lashing gales and monstrous seas that role out of the south-west to smash upon its stubborn gneiss. Three promontories on its west side jutted into the ocean, water breaking white and foaming furiously in rings all around them as they dipped down into undersea ravines.
On the other hand, I found the detail of both the modern day murder plot and the characters' back stories rather a lot to take. My disbelief wasn't entirely suspended at any point.
Fin Macleod has had what must be the ugliest set of life experiences imaginable. In the first chapter we discover his 8 year old son has just died, and from then onwards his sorrows past and present mount and mount to the point of incredulity. The denouement forces us to new heights of trauma but by that stage I was too jaded by disaster to be surprised by anything! It makes the past of your average misanthropic detective look like a walk in the park. But although May does a good job of hinting at the rage and discomfort that Macleod subsequently represses, you never see enough of the impact of all this emotional devastation to make it real. He is unlikeable, which I think is pretty standard for crime protagonists these days, but unlikeable in a very melodramatic way.
Thankfully May hits some sound and subtle thematic notes in spite of the plot: masculinity and community identity being the two most constant. The interactions of the male characters are fascinating - the interplay of power, jealousy and fear in a group of teenage boys is expecially compelling. As an adult, Fin is constantly appraising and determining his masculine status in a group; and working out the actions and signals needed to confirm that status. The identity of the community and of the 'Lewis man', built around the dominating landscape of the island and the ritual of the guga hunt, is well developed too. It would be better for me to recommend this as a book about the men of the isle of Lewis with an incidental crime in it, rather than as a crime novel set on Lewis. That's the reason I will be reading the next in the series (called, rather tidily, The Lewis Man) and avidly discussing this instalment with grandad at the weekend.
Fin Macleod has had what must be the ugliest set of life experiences imaginable. In the first chapter we discover his 8 year old son has just died, and from then onwards his sorrows past and present mount and mount to the point of incredulity. The denouement forces us to new heights of trauma but by that stage I was too jaded by disaster to be surprised by anything! It makes the past of your average misanthropic detective look like a walk in the park. But although May does a good job of hinting at the rage and discomfort that Macleod subsequently represses, you never see enough of the impact of all this emotional devastation to make it real. He is unlikeable, which I think is pretty standard for crime protagonists these days, but unlikeable in a very melodramatic way.
Thankfully May hits some sound and subtle thematic notes in spite of the plot: masculinity and community identity being the two most constant. The interactions of the male characters are fascinating - the interplay of power, jealousy and fear in a group of teenage boys is expecially compelling. As an adult, Fin is constantly appraising and determining his masculine status in a group; and working out the actions and signals needed to confirm that status. The identity of the community and of the 'Lewis man', built around the dominating landscape of the island and the ritual of the guga hunt, is well developed too. It would be better for me to recommend this as a book about the men of the isle of Lewis with an incidental crime in it, rather than as a crime novel set on Lewis. That's the reason I will be reading the next in the series (called, rather tidily, The Lewis Man) and avidly discussing this instalment with grandad at the weekend.
~~Victoria~~