Peter May

Peter May was born in Glasgow on 20 December 1951. His father was an English teacher, and his parents taught him to read and write before he started school. At four he wrote and sewed together a short crayon story, The Little Elf. He later said writing was in the DNA.

As a boy he read widely from his parents' shelves, from Aldous Huxley and Lewis Grassic Gibbon to Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner, without drawing a hard line between literature and crime. In his teens he played in a band, the Aristokrats, and at fourteen wrote an unpublished book inspired by a Spanish holiday romance. He attended Eastwood Senior Secondary School and was expelled in the 1960s. Years later, when he returned as a famous former pupil, he joked that the headmaster asked him not to tell the students he had been expelled.

May's first novel, The Reporter (1978), was adapted as the BBC series The Standard. He left journalism for television and created Squadron for the BBC. For Scottish Television he wrote and story-edited hundreds of episodes of Take the High Road and, with Janice Hally, co-created and produced Machair (1992-1996), the first major Gaelic television drama, shot on Lewis.

After quitting television in 1996 he published the China Thrillers beginning with The Firemaker (1999), researched through annual trips and contacts with Chinese police and forensic scientists. The Enzo Files followed in France. Research for The Critic included grape-picking in Gaillac and induction as a Chevalier de la Dive Bouteille de Gaillac. For Virtually Dead he spent a year as a private detective avatar in Second Life.

The Blackhouse, first published in French in 2009 after UK rejection, launched the Lewis Trilogy (The Lewis Man, 2012; The Chessmen, 2013). The Black Loch (2024) returned to Fin Macleod a decade later. Standalone novels include Entry Island, Runaway, Coffin Road, I'll Keep You Safe, A Silent Death, Lockdown, and A Winter Grave. His final novel, Island of the Dead, is scheduled for January 2027 from riverrun.

May married Scottish writer and screenwriter Janice Hally, his collaborator on Machair. From an earlier relationship he had a daughter, Carol, whom he described publicly as an artist. The couple moved to the Lot in southwest France around 2002 after years of holidaying there. In April 2016, after fifteen years living full-time in France and a connection to the department going back more than forty years, he was naturalised as a French citizen at a ceremony with the Prefete of the Lot.

He cooked Chinese and French food, researched wine regions for the Enzo books, and in later years wrote and performed music from home. Friends and publishers stressed kindness and loyalty as much as craft.

Peter May died on 25 September 2026 at his home in southern France in the Lot, aged 74. The news was announced by his wife Janice Hally and by his publishers. Editions du Rouergue remembered raw sensitivity, empathy and kindness. Jon Riley of riverrun called him irreplaceable and noted he had completed Island of the Dead in July 2026 and was preparing a farewell tour of Scotland and Lewis for its January 2027 publication. Cause of death was not made public in the initial reports. First Minister John Swinney praised his stunning descriptions of precious Scottish landscapes.

May linked Scottish islands storytelling with French crime-fiction culture, helping open a path for atmospheric rural thrillers after Scandinavian crime's wave. The Lewis books, beginning with the French-first publication of The Blackhouse (L'Ile des chasseurs d'oiseaux), remain his signature achievement, with millions of readers. His China and Enzo series, television work including Machair, and late music making round out a career that moved between Glasgow newsrooms, Hebridean sets and a writing life in the Lot.

May trained as a journalist after school, completing a course associated with the National Council for the Training of Journalists. Profiles often place that training at Edinburgh College of Commerce. Journalism was a deliberate path into paid writing while he still aimed to become a novelist. Within a few years of starting newspaper work at the Paisley Daily Express he won the Fraser Award as Scotland's Young Journalist of the Year in 1973, then moved on to The Scotsman and the Glasgow Evening Times.

May argued that crime fiction puts the human condition under stress and is a serious way to examine character. He noted that in France the roman noir is treated as literature, whereas parts of the British literary world looked down on crime. He insisted on visiting every place he wrote about, from Shanghai morgues to Hebridean peat and Paris catacombs. Setting, he said, has moods that shape people and plot.

He cared about ecological themes in later work such as Coffin Road. He also wrote about Alzheimer's, drawing on caring for his father, in The Lewis Man. Living in France while looking back at Scotland, he said, gave him the distance to write about the Hebrides.

Fraser Award, Scottish Young Journalist of the Year (1973). Prix Intramuros for Snakehead (2007). Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE and Barry Award for Best Novel for The Blackhouse. Grand Prix des Lecteurs du Telegramme and other French reader prizes for The Lewis Man. Deanstons Scottish Crime Book of the Year and Specsavers ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read for Entry Island (2014); Trophee 813 for best foreign crime novel (2015). CWA Dagger in the Library (2021). Palle Rosenkrantz Prize (Denmark, 2024). Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere (France, 2025), previously won by writers including John le Carre, Patricia Highsmith and P. D. James.

The Blackhouse was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. May appeared in interviews for Quercus, WHSmith, Derek Bateman, Scots Whay Hae, and French publishers including Editions du Rouergue. Hebrides (2013), with photographs by David Wilson, accompanied the Lewis books. Film interest included an adaptation path for The Killing Room released as Vanishing (2022). YouTube holds his own research films, Barry Award acceptance, and writing talks. After his death, BBC Scotland, The Scotsman, The Bookseller, The Connexion and AFP carried tributes from Janice Hally, Jon Riley, Editions du Rouergue and First Minister John Swinney.

May linked Hebridean landscape crime writing to the French polar tradition that first took The Blackhouse seriously. Sales of about fifteen million copies, a million-plus for the Lewis books in the UK alone, and major prizes in France, Scotland, the UK and the United States place him among the leading British crime novelists of his generation. Publishers and readers stressed kindness and engagement as much as craft. Island of the Dead (2027) will extend that farewell into a final Hebridean mystery.