The Lewis Man

A Steady Drip of Discordant Information. It Will Taunt Your Thoughts.

The Lewis Man by Peter May is the second book in his Lewis Trilogy.

Strong characterisation, a beautiful landscape and a disconcerting plot made this one of my favourite books. I promptly read the other two novels in the series.

Synopsis

A crofter on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides uncovers a body whilst digging peat to heat his cottage. The body belonged to a young man. Somebody had stabbed him and then cut his throat for good measure. The bog acid had preserved the body; he could have been lying there for a thousand years. He could have been, except his arm was emblazoned with a tattoo bearing the legend “Heartbreak Hotel”. The body wasn’t a thousand years old; it was roughly fifty.

A DNA test showed that the body was the brother of a local farmer, Tormod Macdonald, now an elderly man with severe dementia. As the police started to dig into Tormod’s life, they discovered that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. The real Tormod Macdonald, like the body, had died some fifty years earlier in a boating accident.

Who was the dead man, and who was the incoherent old man that was his brother?

Review

Peter May’s tale develops at an unruffled pace. Fin, the man investigating the death uncovers successive layers of detail. Each makes the truth behind the murder harder to grasp. May switches perspectives ably, knitting together the shattered memories of an old man with the current day’s events until the story culminates in a violent ending.

Underlying the plot is a strong sense of place and history. It is easy to envisage yourself hiding from the relentless storms that scurry in from the North Atlantic whilst simultaneously struggling to free yourself from the claustrophobia of small towns and strait-laced religious beliefs.

May’s experience of his father’s descent into dementia gives credence to his portrayal of a confused old man.

The gradual accumulation of unintelligible details will lure you in, keeping the pages turning. My only criticism of the book is that the climax was too hasty. The build-up was sublime.

Excerpt

A darker patch of skin on the right forearm was attracting his attention now. He wiped at it with his swab, then turned to lift a scrubbing sponge from the stainless steel sink behind him, and began roughly rubbing away the top layer of skin. ‘Sweet fucking Jesus’, he said.

Gunn canted his head to try and get a better look at it. ‘What is it?’

Professor Mulgrew was silent for a long time before looking up to meet Gunn’s eye. ‘Why were you so keen to see how long the body might have been in the bog?’

‘So I can clear it off my slate, Professor, and hand it over to the archaeologists.’

‘I’m afraid you might not be able to do that, Detective Sergeant.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this body has been in the peat for no more than fifty-six years — at the very most.’

Gunn felt his face colour with indignation. ‘You told me not ten minutes ago that you were not a bloody carbon-dating machine.’ He enjoyed putting the emphasis on the bloody. ‘How can you possibly know that?’

Mulgrew smiled. ‘Take a closer look at the right forearm, Detective Sergeant. I think you’ll see that what we have here is a crude tattooed portrait of Elvis Presley above the legend “Heartbreak Hotel”. Now, I’m pretty certain that Elvis wasn’t around in the time before Christ. And as a confirmed fan, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that “Heartbreak Hotel” was a number one hit in the year 1956.’

The Lewis Man by Peter May