A riverrun, past Peter May’s Cast Iron

Meeting former journalist, screen-writer turned bestselling crime-writer Peter May, has become an annual highlight to start the year for the Shots Magazine Editors.

So thanks to Sophie Ransom and the Quercus Publishing team we met up with Peter in a restaurant in Farringdon, West London. Peter is published in the new riverrun Imprint managed by renowned publisher Jon Riley, who is also Peter’s long-standing Editor. In case you were wondering where this niche imprint gets its name, remember the opening to Finnigan’s Wake by James Joyce –

Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Joining the Shots Editors were several journalists including the ubiquitous Barry Forshaw, Jake Kerridge from The Telegraph, Jon Coates of The Express and of course the team from rriverun and Quercus.

So what has Peter in store for his readers in 2017 with CAST IRON?

In 1989, a killer dumped the body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin into a picturesque lake in the West of France. Fourteen years later, during a summer heat wave, a drought exposed her remains - bleached bones amid the scorched mud and slime.

No one was ever convicted of her murder. But now, forensic expert Enzo Macleod is reviewing this stone cold case - the toughest of those he has been challenged to solve.

Yet when Enzo finds a flaw in the original evidence surrounding Lucie's murder, he opens a Pandora's box that not only raises old ghosts but endangers his entire family.

Fellow crime-writer Michael Jecks reviewed CAST IRON at Shots –

…........this was a seriously competent crime novel, with more twists and turns than the average anaconda. Peter May’s writing is … well, I’ll admit to a certain professional jealousy here. He writes with a precision and clarity that is all too rare nowadays. It is fluid, brilliant and entrancing. There’s an almost poetic quality to his sentences which I found just brilliant.

So, in short, would I recommend this book? Yes, and more, I am going to get a hold of his previous titles in the series too. It is clear that this book does not deserve to be read on its own. As an individual piece of work, it is very good. However, it leaves me feeling that I had read one of the later Harry Potter books without knowing the story of the main characters before. There is much that I look forward to learning of Enzo’s background.

I would rate this as a highly recommended novel.

Read Mike Jeck’s full review from Shots Magazine Here

CAST IRON is the 6th and Final Book in Enzo Files Series, and for those who only know Peter for his award-winning Black House [the Lewis Trilogy], or Entry island - you are in for a treat, as Quercus / riverrrun have released the Enzo Files backlist in Paperback.

So after some mingling and chatting over a most generous lunch; riverrun Publisher Jon Riley introduced Peter’s latest work

And then Peter spoke in his self-deprecating manner, and you can see the genuine warm relationship between author and publisher as well as how many of us got past the first page of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.

We present a few photographs of the lunch with Peter May.

And a reminder, Shots have discounted copies of CAST IRON available from our bookstore HERE [50% off Cover Price]

Another remember, Peter continues his talks as he tours promoting CAST IRON, so if you wish to get a signed copy, see his itinerary below.

Always check with his web-page HERE in case of any changes, and remember to book ahead to ensure you get a seat, as Peter’s talks are always full houses as he is an extraordinary raconteur, and is as amusing as he is insightful.

In fact, apart from being an extraordinary writer of crime-fiction, he’s a top bloke.

Monday 16th January - PERTH

19.00           Culture Perth and Kinross in association with Waterstones Perth

St John’s Kirk, 31 St John’s Place, Perth

Tickets: £6

Tel for tickets:  01738 444949 (library) or 01738 630013 (Waterstones)                        

Tuesday 17th January - EDINBURGH

12.30-14.00        Formal signing at Waterstones Edinburgh

Waterstones West End, 128 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 4AD

Contact: Euan Tait


Email: Events.EdinburghWestEnd@waterstones.com


Phone: 0131 226 2666                                                                             

18.30            Edinburgh Library event in association with Blackwell’s

Edinburgh Central Library, George IV Bridge                                         

Tel:  0131 242 8000 (library) or 0131 622 8222 (Blackwell’s)                                      

Wednesday 18th January - GLASGOW

18.30            Glasgow Life in association with Waterstone’s Sauchiehall Street

Partick Burgh Halls, 9 Burgh Hall Street, Glasgow

Tickets: £8

Tel:  0141 353 8000 or 0141 332 9105 (Waterstones)                                

Thursday 19th January – MANCHESTER

19.00        WATERSTONES Manchester, Deansgate

Waterstone’s, Deansgate, Manchester

Tickets: £5/£3

Tel:  0161 837 3000                                                                                                 

Monday 23rd January - OXFORD

19.00            WATERSTONES Oxford

Waterstone’s, William Baker House, Broad St, Oxford OX1 3AF

Tickets: £5 or £3 with a Waterstones Loyalty Card
           

Tel:  01865 790212                                                                                                     

Tuesday 24th January - LONDON

19.00            WATERSTONES Kensington

Waterstone’s, 193 Kensington High St, Kensington

Tickets: £5 or £3 with a Waterstones Loyalty Card
  

Tel for tickets: 020 7 937 843

Shots Magazine would like to thank Sophie Ransom, Jon Riley and the riverrun and Quercus Publishing teams for an excellent lunch; and or course Peter May, for the wonderful, insightful read that is CAST IRON.

                                                                            

Peter May's COFFIN ROAD

A new novel from award-winning crime writer Peter May is an event, and his latest COFFIN ROAD which is released Thursday 14^th January, is no exception. Hot on the heels of last year’s deeply personal Runaway, and the exploration of the infamous Scottish Clearances, Entry Island, Coffin Road returns us to the Scottish Islands, immortalised in Peter’s award-winning Black House trilogy.

A man is washed up on a deserted beach on the Hebridean Isle of Harris, barely alive and borderline hypothermic. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his identity is a map tracing a track called the Coffin Road. He does not know where it will lead him, but filled with dread, fear and uncertainty he knows he must follow it.

 A detective crosses rough Atlantic seas to a remote rock twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. With a sense of foreboding he steps ashore where three lighthouse keepers disappeared more than a century before - a mystery that remains unsolved. But now there is a new mystery - a man found bludgeoned to death on that same rock, and DS George Gunn must find out who did it and why.

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 wilfully abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that others were behind his disappearance.

So with thanks to Quercus Publishing’s Jon Riley, Hannah Robinson and liaison Sophie Ransom, a group of London based Literary critics were invited to join Peter May for lunch at London’s The Ivy, before Coffin Road is released on Thursday 14^th January. Shots Editor Michael Stotter and I, had a most delightful afternoon, meeting up with our friends and colleagues, including Barry Forshaw, The Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge, The Sunday Times’ Joan Smith, Jon Coates of The Sunday Express, Joe Haddow from BBC Radio 2 Bookclub and Marcel Berlins of The Times. It was especially delightful to see Marcel in rude health as he had been seriously ill, but he had recovered and was in great form, and as energetic as ever. As I had stepped down after three years as a CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger Judge, I had been asked to join the CWA Steel Dagger Team as a Judge. Marcel had to step down from the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger judging committee managed by Ian Fleming Publications, due to his recent illness. We were all delighted that he was looking so well, as Marcel is a very dear friend of ours, and a great writer, reviewer of the genre.

Jon Riley and I chatted about Peter’s new work Coffin Road. Both of us remarked how we liked the style, reminiscent of John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardner in so far as it was a deeply gripping thriller, striated with a conspiratorial edge [and social conscience] which is hinted at by Peter’s dedication “To the Bees” which should give readers a clue as to a hidden theme.

So after a few drinks and lively conversation, followed by an excellent lunch, Jon Riley introduced Peter May who said a few words, including a surreal and humorously mischievous observation on his publishing career. We all knew Peter was previously published by Hodder and Stoughton, but had parted ways several years ago and had been picked up by Quercus Publishing, with The Black House; and Quercus Publishing were now owned by Hodder and Stoughton; proving the circular and surreal nature of life and the continued consolidation in the publishing industry.

 We present a smattering of photos from the literary lunch hosted by Quercus at The Ivy on Wednesday 13^th January, a day before release of COFFIN ROAD.

Peter starts an extensive tour in support of his new work, and we’d urge you to attend as not only is Peter May a remarkable crime writer, but he is a very amusing raconteur as his speech above, indicates.

Peter May UK Tour for Coffin Road

Waterstones, Deansgate 

Thursday 14th January 7pm

Event Chaired by Cath Staincliffe

Information Here

The  Mitchell Library, North St, Glasgow G3 7DN 

Monday 18th January 1pm

Book Online Here

Or buy tickets from box office on 0141 353 8000

More Information Here

Glasgow - Newton Mearns

Waterstones, The Avenue Shopping Centre

Monday 18th January 7pm

More Information Here

Inverness

The Ironworks

Tuesday 19th January at 7pm

More Information Here

Edinburgh

Edinburgh Central Library,

Wednesday 20th Jan 2016, 7pm

More Information Here

Edinburgh

WHSmith, The Gyle Centre, Edinburgh,

Thursday 21st Jan 2016, 10.30am

More Information Here

Leeds

Waterstones

Thursday 21st January 7pm

More Information Here

Oxford

Blackwell’s Oxford

Monday, January 25th at 7pm

Tickets: call 01865 333623 for more information or email events.oxford@Blackwell.co.uk

London

London - Piccadilly and Chaired by Peter Guttridge

Tuesday 26th January 6.30pm

More Information Here

Read the Shots Review here and Shots have hardcover copies at a generous discount for our readers here because if you enjoyed The Black House which commences The Lewis Trilogy, you’ll relish Coffin Road.

Shots Ezine pass thanks to Quercus Publishing for a wonderful lunch and afternoon, a respite from our busy lives and a chance to break bread with Peter May, a tremendous writer who is enjoying critical and commercial success with his exceptional narrative skill. 

BBC ALBA ON THE TRAIL OF THE POPULAR ‘LEWIS TRILOGY’ NOVELS

A new BBC ALBA programme is to follow the path taken by the central character in one of the most popular series of crime novels of recent years.

 

Peter Guttridge, Ali Karim, Peter May, Marcel Berlins & Barry Forshaw

 

 Sàr-Sgèoil examines Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy in an hour long programme presented by Cathy MacDonald.

 The first novel in the series, The Blackhouse, has made the austere landscape of Lewis familiar to an international audience of crime-fiction fans.  The widely translated book has won awards in France, the United States of America and China.  Its follow-up, The Lewis Man, topped the UK hardback bestseller list for 18 weeks and including the third and final instalment, The Chessmen, the trilogy has sold more than one million copies.

 The programme sees Cathy travels in the footsteps of Detective Fin MacLeod, the central character of the books.  Her travels take her from her native Lewis to Eriskay in the south. En route, she visits the dramatic locations and meets the real life characters who inspired Peter May in his writing of The Lewis Trilogy. 

 

 

 

 In Ness, Cathy visits the boat shed that inspired the gruesome opening scene of The Blackhouse. It was here that Angel MacRitchie’s body was discovered. Once there, Cathy meets guga hunter Dods MacFarlane, whose personality and stories inspired the character of Gigs MacAulay. MacAulay is described by May in the book: “Physically he was not a big man but he was a huge presence… he had been out to the rock more often than anyone else on the team.” 

 It was during a conversation with Dods and his fellow guga hunters that Peter developed the storyline for some of the key scenes in The Blackhouse.  Through this meeting, Lewis and the ‘guga isle’ of Sula Sgeir are now as familiar to crime fans around the world as the bleak Sweden of Wallander or the Denmark of The Killing.

 In Stornoway, Cathy calls in on Stornoway police station where she conducts an interview with local policeman George Murray, who is more used to being the interviewer than the interviewee.  George inspired Peter May in his creation of the character DS Gunn, who appears in all three novels as sidekick to Fin MacLeod.  The real life George noted his resemblance to the fictional George immediately and thought, “Oh good grief, I hope that’s not me!”

 From there, Cathy makes her way to South Uist and Eriskay where the second novel in the trilogy is partly set.  While there, she travels in style in Mary Alex Kirkpatrick’s distinctive pink sports car.   She ascertains whether Mary Alex’s driving bears any resemblance to that of character Morag’s - did she “crunch the car into first gear” and “kangaroo towards the gate, narrowly missing the gate posts”?   Back at the house, Cathy and Mary Alex sit in the lounge in which the second novel’s dramatic and bloody dénouement occurs.   

 Cathy also meets author Peter May – creator of pioneering Gaelic TV drama series Machair. He explains that his years of working on the soap gave him a wide knowledge of the Lewis landscape, people and culture.  He now lives in France, but says the memory of Lewis never left him and inspired his acclaimed trilogy.

 Sàr-Sgèoil: Lewis Trilogy, produced by Caledonia TV for BBC ALBA, will be shown on Tuesday 23 December from 9.00 until 10.00pm.

 

BBC ALBA is available on the following platforms:

·         Sky 143 (UK)
·         Freeview / You View 8 (Scotland only)
·         Virgin Media 161 (UK)
·         Freesat 110 (UK)
·         BT Vision 8 (Scotland only)
·         Smallworld 170 (Ayrshire and North West England)
·         BBC iPlayer

Look back on SHOTS' coverage for Peter May