Finlay Macleod,
known as Fin, is a former detective on the Edinburgh police force. He’s left
the force and returned to where he was born and raised – the Isle of Lewis in the Outer
Hebrides, off the northwestern coast of Scotland. It’s a place of memories of
youth, the aunt who raised him after his parents died, and the children he grew
up with. It is with one of those children, now a bear of a man named John Macaskill
whom Fin calls Whistler, that Fin experiences what feels like an earthquake but
is known as a “bog burst” that drains a nearby loch, or lake.
And there, at
the bottom of the lake, lies a small airplane. Find and Whistler know whose
plane it is – the leader of a band they were part of 17 years before. The plane
and its pilot had supposedly disappeared over the nearby Atlantic many years
before. But there it is, in the bottom of the drained loch. And in it is a body
of man who was clearly murdered, the side of his head bashed in.
This is the
heart of the story of The Chessmen by
British (I should probably say Scottish) writer Peter May. It’s a
mystery with deep roots in the past. It is a mystery in a place where the past
is always present and where the present is always old. It is a savagely
beautiful place fought over by Vikings, tribesmen, Scots, and English, a place
where enemies and friends settle their differences with their fists. It is a
place of harsh Presbyterianism and unbridled passions.
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| Isle of Lewis |
Fin knows that
someone had to land the plane on the loch and then sink it. Someone swam away
from a murder. He sees that Whistler knows more about the plane than he’s
saying; Whistler, in fact, walks away and doesn’t look back. What happened with
that murder is still affecting lives all those years later.
May takes us
through the rise of the Gaelic band that the main characters were part of. Fin
himself was a roadie for the band. The passions that played out among the band
members helped to lead to the murder.
 |
| Peter May |
The Chessmen is a standalone novel, but it is
actually the third in May’s Lewis Trilogy. The first was The
Black House and the second was The
Lewis Man. May is a screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer who has 20 writing
awards. Interesting enough, The Black
House originally could not find a publisher in Britain, and was first
published in France, where it commanded so much attention (and several awards)
that it became a bestseller in Europe – before being published in the U.K. May
has published some 23 crime and general novels and a travel book about the
Hebrides, and produced five television screenplays and one for a forthcoming
movie.
May’s novels are
known for their solid research (see the video below for the topography researched for The Chessmen). We learn a considerable amount of the Isle of
Lewis’s history, including a ship disaster in 1919. It is also the place where
the famed Lewis Chessmen
were discovered in 1831, and the chessmen play a small but ultimately pivotal
role in the unfolding of the story.
The Chessmen is a fine mystery and a good novel,
filled with how the past not only shaped the present but never really leaves.
Related: Peter May’s web site.
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