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Entry Island

An edge-of-your-seat thriller you won't forget

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Entry Island

By: Peter May
Narrated by: Peter Forbes
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WINNER: DEANSTON SCOTTISH CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014
WINNER: ITV SPECSAVERS CRIME THRILLER BOOK CLUB BEST READ OF THE YEAR 2014
'A wonderfully complex book' PETER JAMES

A detective is haunted by the feeling he knows his murder suspect - despite the fact they have never met.

IF YOU FLEE FATE...

When Detective Sime Mackenzie is sent from Montreal to investigate a murder on the remote Entry Island, 850 miles from the Canadian mainland, he leaves behind him a life of sleeplessness and regret.

FATE WILL FIND YOU...

But what had initially seemed an open-and-shut case takes on a disturbing dimension when he meets the prime suspect, the victim's wife, and is convinced that he knows her - even though they have never met.

And when his insomnia becomes punctuated by dreams of a distant Scottish past in another century, this murder in the Gulf of St. Lawrence leads him down a path he could never have foreseen, forcing him to face a conflict between his professional duty and his personal destiny.

LOVED ENTRY ISLAND? Read the first book in Peter May's acclaimed China thrillers series, THE FIREMAKER
LOVE PETER MAY? Buy his new thriller, A SILENT DEATH

(P)2013 Quercus Publishing Ltd©2013 Peter May Canada Crime Crime Thrillers Fiction Mystery North America Police Procedural Suspense Thriller & Suspense Thriller Exciting Highlander Dream
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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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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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Loved this intriguing tale of lost love and murder across miles and across the years.

rama across the centuries

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Excellent narration of a fascinating story. Brilliant descriptive writing with great historical detail. First time I have come across this author;will definitely be seeking out more of his work.

Fantastic, highly recommended.

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