10/21/19

The Blackhouse: A Great Mystery from a Great Writer


The Blackhouse (2009 in UK/2012 in North America)
By Peter May
Quercus Books, 430 pages.
★★★★

Do you read mysteries for the thrill, or for their elegant prose? Why not have both? I have recently discovered/devoured the works of Scottish writer Peter May. The Blackhouse is the first book in his Isle of Lewis trilogy and it’s a juicy one. It should also be read first so that you get to know its main character Fin Macleod.

Sea stack off the coast of Orkney
Fin is a conflicted man. He is approaching the middle of middle age and is still haunted by a combination of tragedy and bad decisions the befell him: the early death of his parents; driving away the love of his life, Marsaili (“Marshally”); failing to prevent a sea stack catastrophe during a guga* roundup; and hastily marrying Mona, a dead relationship in more ways than one. Three of these events occurred on his native Lewis, which Fin fled to put distance between himself and his past.

Gray clouds followed Fin to the University of Glasgow, where he failed to matriculate, and on to Edinburgh, where his young man’s dreams mutated into a career with the polis—as Scots spell police–where he has risen in the detective ranks. Fin’s pretty good at his job, though he finds little joy in it. He’s one of those people who is more clear about what he doesn’t want than what he does. He sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with Lewis.

This means that, of course, he will end up there. Fin worked on a grisly unsolved case in Edinburgh and now there’s one with the same MO (modus operandi) on Lewis–in his wee village of Crobost no less. His superior is having none of Fin’s excuses not to go; after all, how many native Gaelic speakers are there in a police force? Just 1.1% of Scots still speak it and–just Fin’s luck–many of them are on Lewis.

Fin isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms upon return. The local polis–with the exception of Detective Sergeant George Gunn–look upon him as a city slicker, their supervisors are offended that he’s there in the first place, and his old pals on the island regard him through lenses of suspicion, detachment, resentment, and barely disguised envy. To make matters worse, Fin once knew the murder victim, Angus Macritchie. He and just about every other male at the island school was once bullied by Angus. Adulthood did not improve Angus. Pretty much everyone on the island is a suspect. Can it get any worse? Yes. Marsaili is married to his old school mate, Artair, and they are living a quasi-bohemian life that feels “off” to Fin.

Peter May is a fine writer with a gift for evocative language that makes you imagine gunmetal gray clouds, the smell of peat smoke, and the starkness of the landscape. Years ago, when my wife and I were on the joined islands of Harris and Lewis, she remarked that much of the scenery looked as if the glaciers had just left the week before. It put us in mind of how Leon Uris once described Ireland: “a terrible beauty.” May’s Lewis is one whose very austerity makes it an uncomfortable mix of creeping modernity and lingering traditionalism, parochialism, and shopworn values. Fin is haunted by ghosts, but he’s not a godly man. May describes island religion thusly:

The Church of Scotland. The United Free Church of Scotland. The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)–the wee Frees, as the free churches were universally known. Each one was a division of the one before. Each one a testimony to the inability of man to agree with man. Each one a rallying point for hatred and distrust of the other.

Blackhouse with grass now growing on roof
As you can infer from such a passage, Peter May murder mysteries are not just–or even primarily–about crime-solving. He uses the blackhouse as a metaphor for the tug of war between the present and the past. Some islanders still reside in (updated) crofter** cottages that were dubbed blackhouses because they had no chimneys–a section of the thatched roof was pushed aside so that smoke from the open-pit fireplace could escape. Much didn’t, hence the ceilings were covered in soot. Fin’s life is certainly stained with dark patches, but his is not the only one. The Blackhouse is about the things that never rub off, things that can be repaired, things that maybe can be repaired, and things that are irreparably broken.

May tells his tale in alternating chapters set in the present and the past. He paints a vivid picture of Fin’s childhood and youth and we get the message that, his protests notwithstanding, Fin is Lewis and Lewis is Fin. He professes a desire to leave, but also finds it a joy to converse in Gaelic, can’t shake his abiding attraction to Marsaili, and is coming to grips with how Lewis has deep hooks in him.

The Blackhouse is one of the best mysteries I’ve read in some time. I admired Fin as a flawed central character. The messiness of his private life and his inner doubts feel much more real than what one gets in detective novels in which the investigator possesses special insights that stagger his lessers. Fin often gets things wrong and on occasion he’s slow to add 2 + 2.

I also admired that May makes the Isle of Lewis a character in its own right, not through some hokey veiled personification tactic, but by putting hard people in the midst of a harsh landscape. I recommend that you read the book before you go to Google Images to see what Lewis looks like. My guess is that you’ll be surprised at how well your mental picture matches the real Macleod (as it were). 

The Blackhouse made me hunger to read the remaining books in the trilogy, so stay tuned. But, again, read this one first. The next two are continuations of what could cheekily be subtitled The Reeducation of Mr. Macleod.

Rob Weir
 


* Guga is the chick of a species of gannet. They are a delicacy for Western Isles peoples and are hunted on dangerous sea stacks that are often located miles out to sea. The guga hunt is likely a remnant from days when protein was scarce.

** A crofter is a small farmer (5-12 acres) engaging in subsistence mixed agriculture. In Scotland, many of the crofters were renters and thousands were evicted during the 18th and 19th century Highland Clearances when their lairds (lords) decided to graze sheep on croft lands.  

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