A Winter Grave by Peter May

 

A Winter Grave by Peter May.

Published 19th January 2023 by riverrun.

From the cover of the book:

A TOMB OF ICE

A young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station in Kinlochleven discovers the body of a missing man entombed in ice.

A DYING DETECTIVE

Cameron Brodie, a Glasgow detective, sets out on a hazardous journey to the isolated and ice-bound village. He has his own reasons for wanting to investigate a murder case so far from his beat.

AN AGONIZING RECKONING

Brodie must face up to the ghosts of his past and to a killer determined to bury forever the chilling secret that his investigation threatens to expose.

Set against a backdrop of a frighteningly plausible near-future, A Winter Grave is Peter May at his page-turning, passionate and provocative best.

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Scotland, 2051. The body of an investigative journalist is found frozen in the ice on the mountains near Kinlochleven by a young meteorologist, sparking a police investigation.

Cameron Brodie, a seasoned Glasgow detective, is sent to investigate the death, in the company of a pathologist Dr Sita Roy. This is an investigation he was reluctant to accept, despite the fact that his mountaineering expertise makes him the ideal candidate, but the bad news he has just received means he now has a very personal reason for being in Kinlochleven.

Climate change makes the Scottish highlands a treacherous place to be. However, the weather does not seem to be the only unpredictable thing hampering the investigation, and Brodie and Roy find themselves in grave danger once they establish that the journalist's death was the result of foul play. What was he up to in this remote spot, and why did someone want him dead? Can Brodie get to the truth, and tie up his own loose ends, before his fate is sealed?

Set in a dystopian near future, where climate change has drastically changed to face of the earth, A Winter Grave is an absolutely gripping combination of cli-fi thriller and police procedural that kept me glued to the page from beginning to end.

Brodie is a man who is desperate to make amends for the choices he has made, and this investigation in Kinlochleven offers an unexpected opportunity to try to lay his ghosts to rest. Little does he know how dangerous his visit to the remote Scottish highlands will be. The action moves between the investigation in 2051, and the history of Brodie's relationship with his wife and daughter, building a picture of a gifted detective tortured by the things he has done in the past. As it turns out, his personal agenda is closely connected to how this investigation plays out, and more secrets are about to be exposed than those relating to the case.

May is a master story teller, and he keeps his cards very close to his chest throughout, carefully dropping his reveals with perfectly timed precision. The two strands of the story come together beautifully, upping the tension notch by notch. Events spiral violently out of control, towards an action-packed climax that combines the truth behind the bloody events in Kinlochleven with a shocking confession from Brodie, in a highly enjoyable double whammy of twists... and the ending is sublime!

There is a wealth of glorious themes to delve into in this book. The impact of climate change is central to the story, and it makes for an unsettling backdrop. The future May describes is a bleak one, made all the more chilling by the fact that it is firmly grounded in science. May weaves magic in the way he uses the environment, and extreme weather, building on this framework to enhance the menacing plotlines. The atmosphere of isolation and peril he creates is suburb, and this adds deliciously to the mayhem he has his characters engaging in. Throw in all manner of human frailty, juicy corruption, greed, manipulation, and games of power, and this becomes the kind of book you find impossible to put down. I love how May uses technology in this story too!

I absorbed this book in one tasty bite, as I knew I would at the hands of an accomplished author who knows exactly how to engage his audience with thrills, spills, and visceral emotion. What a book!

A Winter Grave is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to riverrun for sending me a hardcover copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Ranson PR for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Peter May was born and raised in Scotland. He was an award-winning journalist at the age of twenty-one and a published novelist at twenty-six. When his first book was adapted as a major drama series for the BBC, he quit journalism and during the high-octane fifteen years that followed, became one of Scotland's most successful television dramatists. He created three prime-time drama series, presided over two of the highest-rated serials in his homeland as script editor and producer, and worked on more than 1,000 episodes of ratings-topping drama before deciding to leave television to return to his first love, writing novels.

In 2021, he was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. He has also won several literature awards in France, received the USA's Barry Award for The Blackhouse, the first in his internationally bestselling Lewis Trilogy; and in 2014 was awarded the ITV Specsavers Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year award for Entry Island. Peter now lives in South-West France with his wife, writer Janice Hally.