Scottish novelist and screenwriter Peter May, best known for his Lewis Trilogy of crime thrillers set in the Hebrides, has died, his French publishing house told AFP on Monday. May, who was 74, wrote around 30 novels including the bestselling trio of “The Blackhouse,” “The Lewis Men” and “The Chessmen,” set on the remote Isle of Lewis off the west coast of Scotland. “Peter May was a man of raw sensitivity, profoundly empathetic, considerate, and endlessly kind,” his French publisher Editions du Rouergue said in a statement, paying tribute to the memory of an “immensely creative man.” “The Blackhouse” was first published in translation in French by Editions du Rouergue in 2010 as no English-language publisher recognized its potential. May, who lived in the Lot area of southwest France and became a French citizen, was one of the country’s most popular foreign crime writers. “In ‘The Blackhouse,’ there is everything: magnificent characters, breathtaking landscapes (…) Peter was perhaps ahead of the Scandinavian wave that follows this vein,” Danielle Dastugue, founder of the French publisher, told AFP in 2023. Born in Glasgow on December 20, 1951, May published his first book at the age of 26. Expelled from high school in the 1960s for being too rebellious, he dreamed of becoming a writer. After starting out as a journalist, he created two series for the BBC, then co-wrote and produced the Gaelic-language series “Machair,” set on Lewis. He also worked on the long-running Scottish soap opera “Take the High Road.” He left television in 1996 and wrote “The Firemaker,” the first novel in a series of crime stories set in China. May was also concerned about the future of the planet, something that came through in his more recent novels such as “Coffin Road.”
