On the remote Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, a man washes up on a deserted beach, hypothermic and completely disoriented. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. Coffin Road sits around the midline in terms of where it sits on my list of favourite Peter May books. It isn’t quite the Lewis trilogy, but I liked it more than the Enzo Files. It was better than Runaway, yet it wasn’t quite Entry Island. Middle ground. Of course, middle ground for Peter May is still higher than my average middle ground. Worth a read if you’re a Peter May fan; a good starting point if you’re new to his work but not the first book I would direct you towards. It was interesting. I took a different approach. In the book there are kind of three strands to it. There’s the guy himself who’s lost his memory, there’s the girl who’s looking into the death of her father, and there’s the cop who’s investigating the body found out on the lighthouse island. And the girl’s story and the cop’s story are both told in a conventional third person narrative, but when it came to telling the guy’s story, I told it first person present tense. So that it was absolutely immediate, you’re actually in his head sharing his confusions, his discoveries, his revelations with him at every point, so that you’re entirely with him. And when I was writing it, that’s how it was for me too, I was entirely with him, I was living that experience. It was taking that first person present tense that made it totally immediate.

Coffin Road | Crime Fiction Lover Coffin Road | Crime Fiction Lover

So there are three investigations going on now. Neal on his journey of self-discovery, Karen, on her search for answers about her father’s suicide, and the police, who begin asking awkward questions of a man who doesn’t know who he is. These three aspects come together brilliantly, working together to slowly unfold the main mystery of the book. Parts reminded me of the first China thriller, in the way there was something much larger than any of the individual characters at play, but it was far from a carbon copy of the book. May has written novels set in the Outer Hebrides before, and this novel is bound to have readers seeking out his earlier works. A brilliant read! Coffin Road börjar bra, men blev inte riktigt den fullträff jag hade hoppas på. Men Peter Mays underbara miljöbeskrivningar och hans sätt att skriva så inlevelsefullt gör boken läsvärd! Neal’s chapters are written in first person, but our other two leads (DS Gunn and Karen) are written in third person. I didn’t get much of a sense of Gunn, but he’s really only a means to an end, whereas we spend some time with Karen who’s struggling with her father’s suicide. The Karen / Neal storylines take a while to converge and just when we think we know the connection, May cleverly redirects our attention.

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What is it like to write a character who is discovering himself at the same time as we are? Was it a challenge? Still, I read May for more than that. He can write some rip roaring mysteries. A man washes on a beach with no idea how he got there. He is freezing cold, disoriented and scared. He stumbles his way home and has no idea of his name until a neighbor calls out to him. He tries to remember who he is but the life he stumbles into is almost blank. He kept things secret before his accident. Detective Sergeant George Gunn has been assigned to investigate the discovery of a body on the Flannan Isles. He does not know the man's identity, who killed him or why, and begins an investigation that seems to have absolutely no clues. Interessante è anche il fulcro della storia: una ricerca sulle api e sulla loro sopravvivenza, per garantire un futuro sostenibile al genere umano. Uno studio ostacolato, condotto privatamente in gran segreto, i cui risultati rischiano di essere boicottati, perché la loro divulgazione desterebbe non poco scompiglio fra i colossi che speculano nel settore degli insetticidi.

Coffin Road by Peter May | Goodreads

I particularly liked the man who washed up on the beach with no memory. A man who apparently called himself Neal but who—as he sets about rediscovering his life—now realises he was a fraud. And perhaps worse. Neal’s our main narrator and perhaps that’s why I identified most with him. I’m not sure of the scientific veracity of Neal’s memory loss as described in the novel (as dissociative amnesia), but it was interesting that he remembered how to do many things without knowing how he knew how to do them. If that makes sense. The mom's reaction to the girl still being sad TWO YEARS after his supposed death: "He's dead, get over it!" His neighbours know him as Neal Maclean, a writer who is almost finished a book about three lighthouse keepers gone missing from the Flannan Isles in 1900. It soon becomes apparent to him that this is a cover, but for what? A boat trip to one of the Flannan Isles, Eilean Mor, leads to a discovery that explains the dread, and has him wondering if he is a murderer.

I was introduced to Peter May by a Goodreads friend (thanks Gary) and am really enjoying his books. This book is his most recent and I looked forward to reading it whenever I had to put it down.

Coffin Road by Peter May | Waterstones

All'io narrante di Neal, infatti, si alternano capitoli in terza persona in cui si muovono gli altri (non molti) personaggi. Personaggi, tra l'altro, tutti caratterizzati molto bene, ma Karen... quanto mi è piaciuta Karen... che ragazza determinata, che carattere, quanto coraggio! I had expected three plotlines. The mystery of the lighthouse keepers that disappeared 100 years ago, the plotline of the man without a memory and of Karen, who refuses to accept that her father has committed suicide. The first one was moot, so it's only the present day voices. The man without the memory washes up on the beach and does not have the first clue of who he is. When a man is found killed on a remote island, the man without memory thinks he might have killed him. Peter May knows the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland and provides some beautiful descriptions of the land and the weather - neither of which is very hospitable on any given day. The book begins with a man washed up on the shore of the Isle of Harris. He does not know his name, or what happened to him. It's as if he just awoken and found himself in a place he has no idea of why he is there. According to Goodreads and my own somewhat-dilapidated memory, I’ve never read any books by France-based Scottish-born author Peter May. This surprised me as he has three series under his belt, a number of standalone novels and has been involved in writing for television in the UK. A man wakes up on a beach, with no memory of who he is or how he got their, he appears to be known as Neal Maclean, though this rings no bells for him.

That breathless realisation banishes all else. The cold, the taste of salt, the acid still burning all the way up from my stomach. How can I not know who I am? A temporary confusion, surely? But the longer I stand here, with the wind whistling around my ears, shivering almost beyond control, feeling the pain and the cold and the consternation, I realise that the only sense that has not returned to me is my sense of self. As if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance.” Late one night, after a few drinks, a friend told me about some books he’d read. He’d admitted that he didn’t often read fiction but that during a period of recovery form an operation he’d been gifted the first in a mini-series of three and had subsequently devoured the whole set. It got my attention and I asked him the name of the author. By the next morning I’d not only forgotten the writers name but the whole conversation was lost to me too. However, some months later, whilst browsing my local bookstore, I came across a crime fiction novel and the description rang a distant bell. Could this be the fabled work that had so excited my friend, the non-reader? It turned out that it was and a few weeks later I’d repeated the feat and all three books had been consumed. The books comprise the Lewis Trilogy, written by Scottish wordsmith Peter May. But the story itself came from something that I’d had in my head for several years in fact. And I’d just been trying to find a way of telling the story, to do justice to the idea that I had. And the idea I had, I suppose it’s an ecological thing, it’s about bees. Which doesn’t sound like a very promising subject. Bees are essential effectively to the long-term survival of the human race, because they pollinate about 70% of the root vegetables, the crops that we eat and need to survive. And they’re dying off at an enormous rate. Basically the major problem is a particular type of pesticide which is being peddled by several of the world’s biggest agrochem producers, and who are in total denial about it. The only clue to his condition is a map of the island showing a desolate, ancient path called the Coffin Road. With a sense of dread and no clear idea what lies at the other end, he knows he must follow the trail if he has any hope of discovering his identity. I thought about dnf-ing this one but then some bee stuff happened and I love bees, so I kept going and then it was too late to abort the mission.

Peter May - Book Series In Order Peter May - Book Series In Order

His life is becoming dangerous, and he has no idea whom to trust. Karen finds herself in similar dicey situations in her quest for answers as well. Nothing is as it appears. A teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that he would willfully abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that others were behind his disappearance. When I took up with crime fiction, I assumed some of the same good things would be at play as in “serious” fiction. I frequently find it is not. Take Coffin Road by Peter May. He uses one of the saddest tropes in fiction or drama: “I have to know.” In this case it’s Neal –or is it? He was washed up on shore in the Hebrides and has no memory. He must find out who he is, for he soon discovers a dead body. Is he the killer?The light at Luskentyre is stunning. The wind is brisk but soft. The land has soaked up everything thrown at it last night by the storm. It has, it seems, an endless capacity to do so. The sky presents itself in torn strips of blue interspersed by teased-out cotton wool, and the sun reflects in countless shades of turquoise across an outgoing tide that leaves silver sands shining” In addition to the Lewis Trilogy, the Enzo Files, and the China Thrillers, Peter was also able to write six standalone novels including his very first novel, The Reporter published in 1978. In this novel, investigative reporter, Colin Anderson, unknowingly puts his life and the life of his assistant, Janis Sinclair, on the line when he begins to uncover what could very well be the biggest international sabotage of all time. Peter’s other standalone novels include Fallen Hero 1979, Hidden Faces 1981 and 1982, The Noble Path 1992 and 1993, Virtually Dead 2010, and Entry Island 2014. Television and Film