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About Peter May

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.

His passion for detailed research for his books has taken him behind the closed doors of the Chinese Police force, to the kitchen of a three-star Michelin chef, and down the Paris catacombs; he has worked as an online private detective, was inducted as a Chevalier of the Grand Order of Gaillac wines and earned honorary membership of the Chinese Crime Writers’ Association.

He has won several literature awards in France and received the USA’s Barry Award for The Blackhouse, the first in his internationally bestselling Lewis Trilogy, and the ITV Crime Thriller Awards Book Club Best Read for Entry Island.

He now lives in south-west France with his wife, writer Janice Hally.

By Peter May

BY PETER MAY

THE ENZO FILES

Extraordinary People

The Critic

Blacklight Blue

Freeze Frame

Blowback

Cast Iron

THE CHINA THRILLERS

The Firemaker

The Fourth Sacrifice

The Killing Room

Snakehead

The Runner

Chinese Whispers

THE LEWIS TRILOGY

The Blackhouse

The Lewis Man

The Chessmen

STANDALONE NOVELS

Virtually Dead

Entry Island

Runaway

Coffin Road

NON-FICTION

Hebrides (with David Wilson)

Dedication

For my parents

Epigraph

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Galatians 6:7

INTRODUCTION

My first visit to the People’s Republic was pure chance. I was in Hong Kong researching another book which was going to be set in South-East Asia, and my hotel was advertising a one-day trip to Shenzhen in southern China. I jumped at the chance.

We went by train and by coach, and when we stepped off the bus in Shenzhen itself it was as if we had arrived on another planet. It was 1983, just a handful of years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and very little had changed since the Communists took power in 1949. The streets were jammed with bicycles, and everyone still wore their blue Mao suits. Little old ladies hobbled around on bound feet—a horrible hangover from the days of Imperial China.