Peter May is embarking on a UK tour with his new book, A Winter Grave – an engrossing crime thriller set in a near-future devastated by the climate crisis. You can read more about A Winter Grave below, but do make a note of the tour dates in your diary. A Winter Grave is published by riverrun on 19 January 2023.
Thursday 19th January – Hatchard’s, London
Monday 23rd January – Mitchell Library, Glasgow
Tuesday 24th January – Eden Court Theatre, Inverness
Wednesday 25th January – St. John’s Kirk, Perth
Thursday 26th January – Toppings, St Andrews
Friday 27th January – Toppings, Edinburgh
I’ve been a fan of Peter May’s writing since his fabulous Lewis trilogy that started with The Blackhouse and continued with The Lewis Man and finished with the explosive The Chess Men.
After reading those I went back and read all of his Enzo Files series, his China Thrillers series and his stand-alone novels, so it’s fair to say I am very excited about his upcoming book, A Winter Grave, due to be released on the 19th of January! I’ll be on the blog tour for this one, so will be saving my thoughts until then, but this one is deeply personal to Peter arising from his concern about the environment.
A Winter Grave is an engrossing crime thriller set in a near-future devastated by the climate crisis. Incredibly relevant given the COP27 climate change conference which took place recently, A Winter Grave incorporates Peter’s concern for the environment and skillfully uses his detailed research on the fossil fuel industry, big energy companies and climate change in general. Peter has always had an interest in the environment (as seen in his use of bees in Coffin Road) and his apprehension for the environment grew after reading about the COP26 summit last year. Keen to bring this to people’s attention and wanting to put it in an accessible, readable format, he decided to weave it into a crime thriller.
Here’s what the blurb for the book says…
Set in 2051, warnings of climate catastrophe have been ignored, and Scotland has been hit by rising water levels and extreme snow and ice storms. It is against this backdrop that Addie, a young meteorologist checking a mountain top weather station, discovers the body of a man entombed in ice. The dead man is investigative reporter, George Younger, missing for three months, but not a hill walker and so his discovery on a mountain-top near the Highland village of Kinlochleven is inexplicable. Cameron Brodie, veteran Glasgow detective and only mountain climber in the force, sets out on a hazardous journey to the isolated and ice-bound village. He has his own reasons for wanting to investigate the murder case so far from his beat, but he has more than a murder enquiry on his agenda. Torn by a broken marriage and faced with a devastating medical prognosis, Brodie must lay to rest the ghosts of his past, as well as a killer determined to bury forever the secret that his investigation threatens to expose…
I’m excited about this one. Not least because the more writers can do to highlight environmental concerns, the better as far as I am concerned. I read Paul Hardisty’s The Forcing over the holidays and was blown away by its power and relevance.
Do try to make one of the tour stops if you can – and follow the blog tour to see what bloggers make of Peter May’s A Winter Grave.
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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. In 2021, he was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. He has also won several literature awards in France, received the USA’s Barry Award for The Blackhouse, the first in his internationally bestselling Lewis Trilogy; and in 2014 was awarded the ITV Specsavers Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year award for Entry Island. Peter now lives in South-West France with his wife, writer Janice Hally.
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