• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to footer

Crime Books

Prize-Winning Fiction

  • Home
  • Reference
    • Awards
    • Blogs
    • Reading List
      • The Best of The Best
      • International Crime
      • The Last Laugh
  • Index
    • Authors
    • Titles
    • Tags
  • E-Mail Updates
  • Search
  • Rating
    • ★ 5 Stars
    • ★ 4 Stars
    • ★ 3 Stars
    • ★ 2 Stars
    • ★ 1 Star
    • ★ Not Rated
  • Genre
    • Caper
    • Espionage
    • Historic
    • Legal Drama
    • Locked Room
    • Mystery
    • Police Procedural
    • Private Detective
  • Style
    • Cosy
    • Hard-Boiled
    • humorous
    • Literary
    • Narrative
    • Noir
    • Psychological
    • Pulp
    • Thriller
  • Region
    • British
    • European
    • Japanese
    • Nordic
    • North American
  • Era
    • Early 20th Century
      • 1900s
      • 1910s
      • 1920s
    • Mid 20th Century
      • 1930s
      • 1940s
      • 1950s
      • 1960s
    • Late 20th Century
      • 1970s
      • 1980s
      • 1990s
    • Early 21st Century
      • 2000s
      • 2010s
      • 2020s
  • Best Crime Fiction

Peter May

Recommended Reading

Three of Peter May’s books to try:

The Lewis Man by Peter May
Get a Copy

The Lewis Man: A policeman pieces together the shattered memories of an old man to solve a murder. One of my favourite novels. (Review)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.
Snakehead Peter May
Get a Copy

Snakehead: The fourth of May’s “China Thrillers” won the 2007 Prix Intramuros awarded by prisoners in jails in western France. (Notes)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Lockdown Peter May
Get a Copy

Lockdown: When Peter May wrote this novel in 2005, his publishers refused to entertain it. In 2020 they were more enthusiastic. (Notes)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Peter May

Image by Vincent Loisin

Biography

Peter May was born in Glasgow in 1951. He grew up wanting to write for a living. Unfortunately, his education didn’t match his aspirations.

“One day, my headmaster just grabbed me and said: ‘May, take your long hair and your big furry coat and go home and don’t come back.’ So that was the end of my school career.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Young Journalist of the Year

His first job was a short stint working for National Savings as a clerk. He followed that with another as a trainee car salesman. Neither role enthralled him, so he enrolled on a year-long course in journalism at the Edinburgh College of Commerce. That led to work with a local rag, the Paisley Daily Express. Things started to look up in 1973 when he won the Fraser Award for Scotland’s Young Journalist of the Year. He then landed higher-profile positions at the Scotsman and Glasgow Evening Times.

Write About What You Know

During this time, he wrote his first novel, The Reporter.

“I wrote my first published book, which was about a journalist. They always say write about what you know, so I did.” (Shotsmag)

The BBC asked him to adapt it into a television series, leading to a screenwriting career. May contributed to dramas and soap operas before finally giving up his TV work to concentrate on writing novels in 1996.

May stuck to the advice of writing about what you know, going to great lengths to research his novels.

The Lewis trilogy, including The Lewis Man, is set in the Outer Hebrides. May has spent thousands of hours there shooting 99 episodes of the soap opera Machair.

The China Thrillers

May chose a more exotic location for his six-book China thrillers series. He became fascinated by the country after a day trip from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in southern China in the 1980s. It isn’t easy for a Scotsman to become an expert on Chinese policing methods. Not a man to be discouraged, May contacted an American criminologist who had trained hundreds of Chinese police officers. Using his name as a calling card, he met and interviewed countless members of the Chinese police. He even managed to visit the Shanghai mortuary.

“When I was being shown the mortuary in Shanghai, they wheeled out the newly autopsied body of a young man who had been executed the day before. It makes you feel very human, very vulnerable, to see someone so young, so dead and so totally butchered. His face was screwed up in pain, or fear, or both. In China, they execute you by shooting you in the back of the head, so presumably, that was the anticipation of the moment frozen there on his face.” (pagesperso)

Peter May’s books were so successful that the Chinese Crime Writers’ Association invited May to become an honorary member. He also wrote a regular monthly column for Contemporary World Police, a magazine read by hundreds of thousands of Chinese police officers.

The China Series has notched up several prizes. Perhaps most notable was the Prix Intramuros for Snakehead. Prisoners in French jails award the prize. The judging process included a visit to a French prison. There, a panel of inmates interviewed May.

The Importance of Research

May’s research didn’t stop in China. For Virtually Dead, May became a citizen of the virtual world Second Life. He created an avatar and spent a year in the online world as a private detective, working on cases ranging from infidelity to stalking and fraud. Whilst researching The Enzo Files — a series of novels about a forensic scientist in France — May visited Michelin restaurants and the Paris sewers. He also studied winemaking and became a Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Dive Bouteille (The Order of the Divine Bottle).

The Power of Premonition

Maybe the least well-researched of May’s novels was Lockdown which he wrote in 2005. The backdrop was an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in London, which he based upon pandemic planning done in the early 2000s. When he sent it to his publishers, they rejected it as unrealistic.

Fifteen years later, he resubmitted the manuscript. This time they were a little more receptive.

“At the time I wrote the book, scientists were predicting that bird flu was going to be the next major world pandemic… It was a very, very scary thing, and it was a real possibility, so I put a lot of research into it and came up with the idea, what if this pandemic began in London? What could happen if a city like that was completely locked down?” (Tribune India)

Read more at the author’s website.

Peter May’s Books

The Lewis Man by Peter May
Get a Copy

The Lewis Man

Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.
Snakehead Peter May
Get a Copy

Snakehead

Notes

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Lockdown Peter May
Get a Copy

Lockdown

Notes

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Try Another Author

Ruth Rendell

Rith Rendell

Pierre Lemaitre

Pierre Lemaitre

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Volker Kutscher

Volker Kutscher

J.K. Rowling / Robert Galbraith

Robert Galbraith

Tove Alsterdal

Tove Alsterdal

Donna Leon

Donna Leon

Dominique Manotti

Dominique Manotti

Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith

Steve Cavanagh

Steve Cavanagh

Peter Lovesey

Peter Lovesey

Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino

Fred Vargas

Fred Vargas

Dominique Sylvain

Dominique Sylvain

Iceberg Slim

Iceberg Slim

Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr

Joe Gores

Joe Gores

Anthony Price

Anthony Price

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Joël Dicker

Joël Dicker

Zoran Drvenkar

Zoran Drvenkar

Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell

Jørn Lier Horst

Jørn Lier Horst

P.D. James

P.D. James

Sara Lövestam

Sara Lövestam

James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke

Hannelore Cayre

Hannelore Cayre

Donald E Westlake

Donald E Westlake

John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr

Arnaldur Indriðason

Arnaldur Indriðason

Peter James

Peter James

Peter May

Peter May

Mick Herron

Mick Herron

Martina Cole

Martina Cole

Roslund and Hellström

Roslund and Hellström

Hideo Yokoyama

Hideo Yokoyama

Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block

Chris Whitaker

Chris Whitaker

Johan Theorin

Johan Theorin

Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon

Ellis Peters

Ellis Peters

Elly Griffiths

Elly Griffiths

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton

Andy McNab

Andy McNab

William L DeAndrea

William L. DeAndrea

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Stephen Leather

Stephen Leather

Roberto Perrone

Roberto Perrone

John Grisham

John Grisham

Ross Thomas

Ross Thomas

S.G. MacLean

S G MacLean

Val McDermid

Val McDermid

Cameron McCabe

Cameron McCabe

Charles Willeford

Charles Willeford

Share this:

Subscribe via e-mail


This site contains sponsored links. I receive a small commission if you buy a book after visiting a link.
This doesn’t affect the price you pay. Click here to learn more.


Footer

Follow

  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • goodreads
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Reviews

  • Briarpatch
  • Maigret and the Headless Corpse
  • We Begin at the End
  • One Step Behind
  • The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
  • We Know You Remember

Best Crime Fiction

Who are the best crime fiction authors? Enter your e-mail address in the box below to find out.

Affiliate Links · Contact · Site Map · Privacy Policy · Log In

This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, read the Privacy PolicyOK