Peter May, the Scottish novelist who found his first readers in France, dies at 74
Author of the Lewis trilogy — first published in French before finding a home in English — May had settled in the Lot and taken French nationality, according to Télérama.
The Scottish crime novelist Peter May has died at 74, Livres Hebdo reported. He was the author of some thirty novels, best known worldwide for his Lewis quartet, a series of thrillers set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.
That series had an unusual path into print. According to Le Monde, no English-language publisher saw its potential when May first wrote it, and the books appeared first in French translation, issued by Éditions du Rouergue starting in 2010, beginning with L'Ile des chasseurs d'oiseaux. The French edition of the quartet went on to sell three million copies, Livres Hebdo reported, and made May one of the most popular foreign crime writers in France, per Le Monde.
May, who also worked as a screenwriter, had settled in the Lot and had taken French nationality, according to Télérama, which called him "the most French of Scottish novelists."
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
