Scan barcode
A review by davidb71
I'll Keep You Safe by Peter May
2.0
This book has left me feeling utterly perplexed. I've previously read The Lewis Trilogy by Peter May, and I enjoyed all three of those books a great deal, but this one was a real let down.
It's hard to know what I think about it at the moment. It's such an odd book. I found some of it rather good, some of it surprisingly bad.
The story starts in Paris and then shifts to the Isle of Lewis. The story is mainly told from the point of view of Niamh - who witnessed a terrible event in Paris - but also from the point of view of Parisian detective Sylvie Braque, who is investigating the crime Niamh witnessed. And, as with all of the Peter May books I've thus far read, there's a lot of backstory, in this case relating to Niamh's childhood and the burgeoning relationship with her future husband Ruairidh. These parts of the novel dealing with Niamh's past are written in the first person by Niamh; the rest of the novel is written in the third person.
One problem I have with this novel is that it feels unfocused. Many novels switch between different characters and timelines very successfully, but in the case of this book it ended up feeling like there were multiple disparate fragments stitched together in a way that just didn't work for me.
At first I was drawn into the mystery of what happened in Paris, and I enjoyed a lot of the chapters that were narrated by Niamh about her past - these parts of the book really came alive for me. But I thought the overall crime story was extraordinarily bad. At times I was scratching my head because what I was reading made no sense. One person had an attempt made on their life towards the end of the book, for example, but for some reason carried on as though it never happened and never bothered to inform the police. Why?
And I found Sylvie Braque's inclusion in the book strange - she's a detective doing her job, but we also find out a great deal about her personal life; her divorce, her children, her struggle to balance her job with being a mother. I wondered what the point of all this was. The main character of this book is very much Niamh, and I felt that Braque's chapters were an odd adjunct to the book. I think I felt that her character was a little wasted in this book, because this wasn't her story at all. I felt that this character perhaps deserved a book of her own, and her presence here just added to the overall unfocused feel that this book had for me.
It's hard to know what this book is really about - because it's all over the place, switching between different characters and timelines in a way that felt a little messy to me. But, at its heart, there is a crime mystery, and unfortunately I thought the way this played out was absolutely terrible. I didn't like the ending to this book at all, and I thought that the reveal of who the perpetrator was and what their motivation was for doing what they did was extremely disappointing. Plus, there were other implausible aspects about the ending.
If I were rating this purely as a crime novel, I'd struggle to give it even one star. But at the same time there were things about this book I liked. Peter May always writes with an eye for detail that I find absorbing. I enjoyed learning about the manufacture of Ranish tweed and Harris tweed, for example, and I enjoyed many of the vignettes from Niamh's past, and her various encounters with Ruairidh throughout her childhood and teenage years. But overall I found this to be an unfocused and disappointing book, with a quite terrible crime story at the heart of it.
It's hard to know what I think about it at the moment. It's such an odd book. I found some of it rather good, some of it surprisingly bad.
The story starts in Paris and then shifts to the Isle of Lewis. The story is mainly told from the point of view of Niamh - who witnessed a terrible event in Paris - but also from the point of view of Parisian detective Sylvie Braque, who is investigating the crime Niamh witnessed. And, as with all of the Peter May books I've thus far read, there's a lot of backstory, in this case relating to Niamh's childhood and the burgeoning relationship with her future husband Ruairidh. These parts of the novel dealing with Niamh's past are written in the first person by Niamh; the rest of the novel is written in the third person.
One problem I have with this novel is that it feels unfocused. Many novels switch between different characters and timelines very successfully, but in the case of this book it ended up feeling like there were multiple disparate fragments stitched together in a way that just didn't work for me.
At first I was drawn into the mystery of what happened in Paris, and I enjoyed a lot of the chapters that were narrated by Niamh about her past - these parts of the book really came alive for me. But I thought the overall crime story was extraordinarily bad. At times I was scratching my head because what I was reading made no sense. One person had an attempt made on their life towards the end of the book, for example, but for some reason carried on as though it never happened and never bothered to inform the police. Why?
And I found Sylvie Braque's inclusion in the book strange - she's a detective doing her job, but we also find out a great deal about her personal life; her divorce, her children, her struggle to balance her job with being a mother. I wondered what the point of all this was. The main character of this book is very much Niamh, and I felt that Braque's chapters were an odd adjunct to the book. I think I felt that her character was a little wasted in this book, because this wasn't her story at all. I felt that this character perhaps deserved a book of her own, and her presence here just added to the overall unfocused feel that this book had for me.
It's hard to know what this book is really about - because it's all over the place, switching between different characters and timelines in a way that felt a little messy to me. But, at its heart, there is a crime mystery, and unfortunately I thought the way this played out was absolutely terrible. I didn't like the ending to this book at all, and I thought that the reveal of who the perpetrator was and what their motivation was for doing what they did was extremely disappointing. Plus, there were other implausible aspects about the ending.
If I were rating this purely as a crime novel, I'd struggle to give it even one star. But at the same time there were things about this book I liked. Peter May always writes with an eye for detail that I find absorbing. I enjoyed learning about the manufacture of Ranish tweed and Harris tweed, for example, and I enjoyed many of the vignettes from Niamh's past, and her various encounters with Ruairidh throughout her childhood and teenage years. But overall I found this to be an unfocused and disappointing book, with a quite terrible crime story at the heart of it.