China After quitting television May wrote a series of six novels known as the
China Thrillers. To research the series, May made annual trips to China and built up a network of contacts including forensic pathologists and homicide detectives. He gained access to the homicide and forensic science sections of Beijing and Shanghai police forces and has made a study of the methodology of Chinese police and forensic pathology systems.
France Peter May lives in France and his China Thrillers have received several nominations for awards in that country. In 2007 he won the Prix Intramuros. This prize is unique in France as it is awarded by juries of readers made up of prisoners in French penitentiaries. The books under consideration are reduced to a shortlist of 6 finalists and the authors of the shortlisted books then have to travel to various French prisons to be interviewed by panels of detainees.
The Enzo Files is set in France and is centred on the work of half-Italian, half-Scottish Enzo Macleod. This former forensic scientist, now working as a biology professor at a French university becomes involved in applying the latest scientific methods to solve cold cases. May tried to ensure authenticity in the details of his books by researching in France just as he did in China. When writing
The Critic – which involves the wine industry and is set in Gaillac, France – May took a course in wine-tasting, picked grapes by hand, and was invited by the winemakers of the region to be inducted as a
Chevalier de la Dive Bouteille de Gaillac in December 2007. In April 2016, after 15 years of living full-time in France and a connection with the department of the Lot that goes back more than 40 years, May was welcomed as a French citizen at a ceremony of naturalisation by Catherine Ferrier, the Préfète of the Lot.
Second Life While working on his standalone thriller
Virtually Dead, May researched the book by creating an avatar in the online world of
Second Life and opening the Flick Faulds private detective agency. He spent a year in Second Life, working as a private detective, and was hired by clients for cases ranging from protection from harassment by stalkers to surveillance and infidelity investigations.
The Lewis Trilogy After being turned down by all the major British publishers,
The Blackhouse, the first book in 'The Lewis Trilogy', was published first in May's adopted home of France in French translation at the end of 2009. The book was hailed as "a masterpiece" by the French daily newspaper ''
L'Humanité'' and was immediately nominated for several literary awards in France. It won the Prix des Lecteurs at Le Havre's Ancres Noires Festival in 2010 and won the French national literature award, the
Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE at an award ceremony in
Strasbourg in October 2011.
The Blackhouse went on to be published all over Europe and was bought by British publishers
Quercus who brought it out in February 2011. It is the first of, originally, three books to be set in the
Outer Hebrides, an archipelago off the North West coast of Scotland.
The Blackhouse was chosen for the
Richard & Judy Book Club autumn 2011 list. The second book in the trilogy,
The Lewis Man, was published in January 2012, and spent 18 weeks in the UK hardbacks best sellers' list. It has won two French literature awards, the Prix des Lecteurs at Le Havre's Ancres Noires Festival, 2012 and the Prix des Lecteurs du Télégramme, readers prize of France's Le Télégramme newspaper; the 10,000 euro award was presented to May at a ceremony in Brest in May 2012.
The Lewis Man won the 2012 Prix International at the Cognac Festival. The third book in the trilogy,
The Chessmen, was published in January 2013. It was shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Book of the Year 2014. The Lewis Trilogy has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone. In 2024, a fourth book, described as a follow-on to the original trilogy,
The Black Loch, was published. This book is set ten years later than
The Chessmen, the same as the interval between publication of the books.
Standalone novels Entry Island, Peter May's first book after the Lewis Trilogy, won the Deanstons Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2014, the UK national prize, the Specsavers ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year 2014 and the French Trophée 813 for the Best Foreign Crime Novel of the year 2015. The book is partly set on a remote island in modern-day Canada and partly set on the Isle of Lewis 150 years earlier during the Highland Clearances.
Runaway is a crime novel based on Peter May's real experiences of running away from home in Glasgow seeking fame and fortune in London with members of a musical group that he was part of in the 1960s. The story is told through two storylines, one in 1965 in which five teenagers embark on a trip that ends with tragic consequences, and the other in 2015, where three of the men retrace their steps from Scotland to London fifty years later in order to solve a murder. Published in the UK in 2016,
Coffin Road is a standalone thriller set on the
Isle of Harris. The story has an ecological theme involving links between big pharmaceutical companies and
colony collapse disorder in bees. Although it is not a follow-up to May's Lewis Trilogy, the character of George Gunn, a policeman in the Lewis Trilogy, features as a policeman in
Coffin Road. ''I'll Keep You Safe'' (published in the UK in 2018) opens in Paris, France, but the action quickly transfers to the Western Isles of Scotland. A thriller tangentially related to the world of high fashion, it features characters engaged in the rural production of hand-woven fabric similar to
Harris tweed.
A Silent Death, published in the UK in 2020, is a police thriller set in
Andalucia,
Spain, and
Gibraltar. Its action involves the criminal background to the
Costa del Sol and features a Scottish policeman on the trail of a Scottish drug lord.
Lockdown was also published worldwide in 2020 although it was written 15 years earlier. The story takes place in the city of London during a lockdown resulting from a global pandemic. May stated that the book was not published at the time because British editors thought the idea of London under siege from a virus "was unrealistic and could never happen”. == Books, television and film writing credits ==