Peter May

Peter May was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1951 and began his career as a journalist before moving into television, where he created and script-edited long-running Scottish drama series and became one of the youngest producers working in British TV. He started publishing thrillers alongside that television career in the late 1970s, but it was a research trip to China in the 1990s -- undertaken with rare access for a Western writer -- that produced the six-book China Thrillers, pairing a Beijing detective with an American forensic pathologist.

May's biggest breakthrough came with the Lewis Trilogy, three novels set on his ancestral Isle of Lewis that he wrote on spec after leaving television; unable to find a British publisher at first, he sold the books in French translation, where they became bestsellers, before The Blackhouse finally appeared in English in 2011 and turned May into an international name. He followed it with the Enzo Files, featuring a forensic scientist reopening real unsolved French murders from his adopted home in south-west France, and a run of acclaimed standalone thrillers including Entry Island, Runaway and Coffin Road.

His 2020 novel Lockdown, written in 2005 and shelved as too implausible, was finally published just as the Covid-19 pandemic began, becoming an unexpected bestseller. May has continued writing into his seventies, returning to Fin Macleod and the Isle of Lewis with The Black Loch in 2024. He lives in south-west France.