The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man and The Chessmen are unquestionably examples of crime fiction – very good crime fiction, but crime fiction all the same – and they unfortunately fall victim to several of the pathoses that commonly afflict that genre. The Lewis Trilogy is undoubtedly an impressive literary feat, but is it perfect? As it turns out, the answer to that question is an unequivocal 'no'. This technique is remarkably effective, and kept me up well into the night on more than one occasion. For May, these flashbacks serve as a means by which the reader can be drip-fed information relating to the murder that is the subject of the book in question. Each book in the trilogy adheres to a structure whereby the chronicle of present-day events is interspersed with frequent flashbacks. With The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man and The Chessmen (published in 2011, 20 respectively), Peter May has breathed new life into a genre that – largely due to its having been hijacked by the likes of James Patterson – has grown stale.
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