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veronicafrance 's review for:
The Blackhouse
by Peter May
A good read. Recommended by a friend who met the author at a book signing. It's strangely similar in concept to the [a:Dolores Redondo|6888997|Dolores Redondo|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-e0ba3b90c110cd67123d6a850d85373e.png] Baztan series I've been reading. Ostensibly a murder mystery/police procedural, it isn't really that at all. It's about a place (the Isle of Lewis) and the backstory of the main character, Fin MacLeod, is the story. So if you want a straight police procedural, you may be disappointed. I enjoyed it a lot. May's descriptions of the island and its culture are powerful and ring true. Most of the characters feel like real people. Fin is a complicated character with perhaps a few too many dramatic events in his history. At first I found it disconcerting that the flashbacks to childhood were written in the first person and the present day in the third person, but after the first couple, I realised it worked really well, giving the childhood sections a raw immediacy.
I had a few quibbles with the plotting; too many convenient car accidents, and the death of a child early in the story was quite superfluous and unnecessary to the plot -- in addition, Fin's understated reaction to it was unconvincing. Gruesome description of a post-mortem early on rather overdone (you can skim it, it's not essential to the plot). Some people won't like the sudden reveal of important facts right at the end (another Redondo characteristic!). The six-year olds were a bit too precocious. But I enjoyed it the way I used to enjoy Dick Francis novels; intelligent escapism, and I'll certainly read the other two volumes, probably fairly soon.
I had a few quibbles with the plotting; too many convenient car accidents, and the death of a child early in the story was quite superfluous and unnecessary to the plot -- in addition, Fin's understated reaction to it was unconvincing. Gruesome description of a post-mortem early on rather overdone (you can skim it, it's not essential to the plot). Some people won't like the sudden reveal of important facts right at the end (another Redondo characteristic!). The six-year olds were a bit too precocious. But I enjoyed it the way I used to enjoy Dick Francis novels; intelligent escapism, and I'll certainly read the other two volumes, probably fairly soon.