The Chessmen

The Chess Men is the final book of Peter May’s Lewis trilogy. It’s a lovely book to listen to, with the strong Scottish accent of the excellent narrator. The three books are wonderful as they dive into the culture, history, and atmosphere of this area far away from the rest of the world where life is hard and the weather mostly always horrible.

The third book still follows Fin Macleod, an ex-detective  whose life was not easy but who also made several mistakes along the way, and he seems to finally realize that fact in this third book. This time, a dead (and obviously murdered) man is found at the bottom of a loch, in a small plane, and Fin tries to figure out what happened. The story takes us back to his youth, his friends, his innocence, his first job, and all the good times he and his friends had for a while. As he tries to solve the murder, some of the darker and sadder sides of his life resurface and he starts to see things from a new perspective… until he finally understands what happened.

Multiple stories are intertwined in this book, but overall, nothing ends on a positive note, but that’s normal for Peter May. Many people die, most in terrible circumstances, and even the part about his little boy, who was killed years before in a hit-and-run accident, ends tragically. Peter May is the anti-Hollywood story teller: even when answers are found and mysteries are solved, you’re always sadder than you were before. That’s life.

I think my favourite book of the trilogy was the second one, The Lewis Man, because it was the most historically-focused story. But all three were dark, fascinating, beautiful, tragic, and absolutely wonderful. I’m sad this is the end of the Lewis series.