In safe hands

The bestselling scottish crime writer in 2017? No, not Ian Rankin or Val McDermid, but Glaswegian Peter May, whose most famous books are in a genre we may loosely call Hebridean Noir. In fact, the £1.4m May earned through Nielsen BookScan last year made him 2017’s bestselling Scot (discounting Edinburgh-resident but Gloucestershire-born J K Rowling).

Not too shabby for a man whose UK breakout, The Blackhouse (Quercus, 2011), was knocked back by 25 UK publishers in the early Noughties and only landed in this country after it became a massive hit in France. The French connection was not random. May and his wife, playwright and screenwriter Janice Hally, have lived in France for more than 15 years; at a reception he happened to mention the book to his now French publisher, Danielle Dastuge of Éditions du Rouergue.

May says: "I did think it was one of the best things I had ever written, but then to have it universally rejected [in Britain]... Well, that makes you doubt yourself. I think the British crime market was a bit in the doldrums at the time, and my agent kept coming back with notes saying, ‘They want the next Ian Rankin’. Which shows you the mentality; publishers weren’t looking for something new, but a copy of an established success."

The Blackhouse was the first of a trilogy set on the Isle of Lewis and May returns to this setting with the standalone I’ll Keep You Safe (Quercus). Hebridean husband and wife Niamh and Ruaridh run a company making a tweed that is all the rage with high-fashion houses. On a business trip to Paris, Niamh is sent an anonymous email claiming that Ruaridh is having an affair, and just hours later he is killed by a car bomb. Niamh retreats to Lewis with her husband’s remains, soon followed by the dogged French detective Sylvie, who still believes Niamh is the prime suspect.

There is an obvious whodunit aspect to the story, but the strength in I’ll Keep You Safe is in Niamh’s character. May says: "I wanted to do something about grief and how someone responds to the murder of someone close. But then there is the affair—I think that would make everything more complicated and create a horrible ambivalence."

The book is told from the perspective of three main female characters. May acknowledges writing completely from women’s points of view was "a challenge". He adds: "But that’s part of the job. Crime writers are often writing about, say, profoundly evil people, and we don’t necessarily have the same feelings as murderers have. An author has to be able to describe the human condition in all its facets."

May has been writing for a living in one form or another for 45 years. He began a journalism career at 21, working for the Scotsman and the Glasgow Evening Times. This provided the grist for his first novel, The Reporter, published in 1978 when he was 26. He adapted that novel for a BBC series, which led to a career in television, including co-creating, with Hally, "Machair", a long-running Gaelic-language soap opera which led to May’s first visit to Lewis, and the beginning of a fascination with the island. He published several novels while working in TV, quitting to pursue fiction full time in 1996. Before the Lewis trilogy, May wrote a sextet of thrillers set in China for Hodder, while the Enzo Files, a France-based series featuring half-Italian, half-Scots forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod, has been published by Quercus since 2013.

Looking back, May is sanguine about his circuitous path to huge UK success. He says: "It was probably for the best. If someone had published The Blackhouse when I first wrote it, they might’ve done it without the same energy as Quercus did. Or maybe the market wouldn’t have been ready for it. I’m quite happy how it’s worked out."