The Chessmen - Peter May

Originally posted at Book-Ed

The Chessmen Book #t3 in the Award-winning Lewis Trilogy from Peter May

  The Chessmen is the third and final book in Peter May's outstanding Lewis Trilogy. The trilogy follows the life of ex-Detective Inspector Fin MacCleod as a returns to his home on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Through the outstanding writing of Peter May the reader is swept away to that rugged landscape and given a glimpse of the life of the people of live there.

In this final installment Fin has left his former life and is temporarily living with his childhood love Marsaili. Fin has taken a job as head of security for Red River Estates. The Estates are experiencing problems with poachers and one of Fin's first assignments reunites him with his childhood friend John Angus Macaskill, known as Whistler, who both poaches and lives on the Red River Estates. One night while pursuing Whistler across the rugged hills of the estate, they are forced to take shelter in a cave, The next morning they awake to find a loch in the valley of the hills has drained and a small aircraft is visible within the loch. The plane is the missing plane of a former friend Roddy MacKenzie, lost seventeen years earlier. When they explore the plane they find a decomposing body of a man who did not die in a plane crash but was murdered! Discovering the who and why of the murder will turn the lives of some of Fin's closest friends upside down!!

 May tells the story of Roddy MacKenzie and his band Amran through a series of flashbacks that weave their way through Fin's life. The flashbacks tell of the tale of friends whose college band hit it big and the times when Fin served as their roadie, while his friend Donald was their manager. A tale that ended with Roddy's disappearance. Who killed Roddy and Why??

 I love books that take me to places I will never visit and May certainly has done that in this trilogy! From the Scotsman

 "Vivid descriptions of the barren landscapes and cruel weather are a poignant backdrop for a melancholy tale"

and The Daily Record

"Steeped in atmosphere and set in a location that permeates the story like a falling mist, The Chessmen takes the reader on an enticing reel, forwards, backwards, side to side, every step leading to a breathtaking climax."

The Lewis Chessmen in the British Museum

The title of the book The Chessmen refers to the Lewis Chessmen. From Wikipedia.....

The Lewis chessmen (or Uig chessmen, named after the bay where they were found) are a group of 12th-century chess pieces, along with other gaming pieces, most of which are carved in walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland,[1] they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a set as originally made can be assembled from the pieces. Read More

Bottom Line: The Chessmen and the trilogy as a whole are five-star books for me. I love Fin MacLeod and all his friends and I will miss this series.May creates "a sense of place" in his writing like few can and his characters are as real as they come! I very rarely read books again but I just may have to make this series an exception and visit Fin and his friends again and again!!

he Lewis series was not my first encounter with the writing of Peter May I read The Firemaker book #1 of his China Thriller series featuring Chinese  detective Li Yan and Margaret Campbell, a Chicago forensic pathologist several years ago. I just may have to go back and read some of the other books in that six book series, or maybe I can read some of the Enzo files series featuring Scottish forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod to get my Peter May fix!! Anyway I look at it I need more Peter May..... in the words of The New York Times.....

"Peter May is a writer I’d follow to the ends of the earth"

Book 14 of 2015 - Book 9 of the Cloak & Dagger Reading Challenge