The Chessmen

The Chessmen by Peter May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though it’s the final part of a trilogy, this was my first contact with Peter May’s books, picked at random by the Crime & Thrillers reading group I attend. So I wasn’t as prepared as I might have been for the sheer profusion of weather-on-landscape descriptions (for which apparently May is both loved and acclaimed). As beautiful as their prose might be (and it is; it is never mechanically written), from very early on they appear on every page and it read so unnaturally I began to wonder if I was missing out on some insider joke.
As for the story proper, the characters are all very likeable, the setting is gorgeous (Lewis, the northern-most of Scotland’s Western Isles), and the writing’s immersive—especially when May slips into the first-person narrative of Fin’s remembered past. Towards the end I even found myself looking forward to finding out what the weather was like—and strangely it no longer felt like overkill!
But that’s just my own humble opinion…what do you think? Do let me know!

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