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Entry Island

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Entry Island

By: Peter May
Narrated by: Peter Forbes
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About this listen

Winner of the ITV Crime Thriller Award Best Read 2014

Winner of the Scottish Crime Novel of the Year 2014

When Detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light aircraft at Montreal's St. Hubert airfield, he does so without looking back. For Sime, the 850 mile journey ahead represents an opportunity to escape the bitter blend of loneliness and regret that has come to characterise his life in the city.

Travelling as part of an eight-officer investigation team, Sime's destination lies in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Only two kilometres wide and three long, Entry Island is home to a population of around 130 inhabitants - the wealthiest of which has just been discovered murdered in his home.

The investigation itself appears little more than a formality. The evidence points to a crime of passion, with the victim's wife the vengeful culprit. But for Sime the investigation is turned on its head when he comes face to face with the prime suspect and is convinced that he knows her - even though they have never met.

Haunted by this certainty, his insomnia becomes punctuated by dreams of a distant past on a Scottish island 3,000 miles away. Dreams in which the widow plays a leading role. Sime's conviction becomes an obsession. And in spite of mounting evidence of her guilt, he finds himself convinced of her innocence, leading to a conflict between the professional duty he must fulfil and the personal destiny that awaits him.

©2013 Peter May (P)2013 Quercus Publishing Plc
Crime Crime Thrillers Fiction International Mystery & Crime Mystery Police Procedural Thriller & Suspense Thriller Exciting Suspense Highlander Dream

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Critic reviews

"Peter May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." (New York Times)

"A wonderfully complex book. Halfway through I was sitting up late at night, knowing I should be asleep but wanting to know more." (Peter James)

"From the first page I knew I was in safe hands. I knew I could trust this writer.” (Sophie Hannah)

“He is a terrific writer and doing something different.” (Mark Billingham)

“The characters were wonderfully compelling.” (Kate Mosse)

All stars
Most relevant
If you've listened to/read Peter May's Lewis trilogy you'll know how the author can create a powerful atmosphere as a backdrop to a story. Entry Island starts as a modern crime story set in a sparsely populated French-speaking island but then the narrative switches back and forth to the time of the Highland clearances in the Western Isles. Gradually parallels between the two main characters in Canada and two in the 19thC Scotland emerge underlined by them having the same names, which does slightly confuse at times, though the narrator helps a lot by changing from Canadian to Scottish accents. It's a book that gets better as one gets drawn into the atmosphere of the islands and the lives of the people. Melancholy pervades the book: the modern characters through failed relationships and the earlier generation struggling against the weather, isolation, poverty and injustice. The sections dealing with the cruelties of the Highland Clearances are particularly grim. Though not a happy book it is well worth listening to as it is not just another crime story but a multi-layered novel combining history, geography and vicissitudes of human experience.

Atmosphheric, melancholy and moving

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The flashbacks to the past and the Scottish land clearances are annoying. I wasn’t interested in a historical novel. The plot of this particular one is quite boring. I’ve had to keep jumping to the next chapter as they were so predictable that were boring.

I wanted a thriller not a Historical novel

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Loved this intriguing tale of lost love and murder across miles and across the years.

rama across the centuries

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Sometimes you listen to a book out of convenience, as a way of continuing your engagement with a book you're reading while walking the dog or loading the dishwasher. Often the reading gets in the way a little; the voice or the characterisation isn't quite the voice you heard in your head when you were reading it yourself.

Not this time though. This performance is pitch perfect and I decided not even to try to read it, but to enjoy the Peter Forbes' performance as an absolutely integral part of the experience.

The story weaves the stories of two main characters together. One is a fairly straightforward whodunnit, atmospherically located on a windswept and rather bleak island in the gulf of St Lawrence off the Canadian coast. The other is the story of a young man driven from his home in the Hebrides by the highland clearances to settle in Canada 150 years or so before. You know from the outset that there is a connection between the characters, but not what it might be. The resolution of the whodunnit element is completely secondary: you are so invested in the characters by then that it's merely of passing interest.

It's in the interweaving of the storylines that the performance is so vital and so engrossing. Peter Forbes has a way of moving from the narrator's slight Scottish accent to the soft burr of the Hebrides when representing the settler, through to the varying voices of the modern French Canadian and English-speaking characters. It means that you're never lost (easily done on Audible) as to which character is speaking, nor indeed whether you're back in the present day or following the first person account of a displaced young crofter over a century before.

I will seek out Peters May and Forbes in the future. If their other work is even close to as good as this I'll be happy.

Wow

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Thrilling, moving, evocative. A real stand out novel, on a higher level from most thrillers I've read. Extraordinary performance by Peter Forbes. Strongly recommended.

Exceptional

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