Peter May's Lewis Trilogy

Ann Cleeves has been recommending Peter May's The Blackhouse, a murder mystery set on the Hebridean island of Lewis. Ann is someone who knows what she's talking about when it comes to crime fiction set on Scottish islands, so I rounded up the entire trilogy and plunged in. This may or may not have been a good idea. You could certainly read any of the books independently - each book introduces and solves its own mystery - but the story of the central character develops through the three books. The returns diminish, though: I loved The Blackhouse passionately, I found The Lewis Man a very creditable and enjoyable sequel, and The Chessmen had me wondering what had gone wrong. On the whole, I'm glad I read straight through: when I reached the end of The Blackhouse, I couldn't believe that a sequel could be as enthralling and as powerful - but I couldn't have walked away from the narrative at that point (though maybe I should have). And I would have been awfully disappointed if I'd spent any time looking forward to reading The Chessmen. It isn't terrible, exactly, but it isn't in the same league as its predecessors, and because I wasn't as caught up in it I became aware of things which actually had been problematic all along. So the short version is, read The Blackhouse, and then if you are desperate for more, read The Lewis Man. I haven't read any of Peter May's other books, and I'd be happy to do so (there's one set in the Gaillac, in which an influential wine critic is murdered...) but I almost wish I hadn't read The Chessmen.

( That's the short version: the (very) long one is behind the cut )

All the elements are there, but somehow they fail to convince: unless it's just me, of course, unless it's not that Peter May couldn't stretch to a trilogy but that I couldn't, that I simply succumbed to a fit of indigestion after gulping down three books too fast. I don't think so, but then I wouldn't, would I?