A Winter Grave: a chilling new mystery set in the Scottish highlands

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In October, at one of my favourite festivals, the Cognac festival of Crime Writing I won the Prix Polar International by a unanimous vote of the judges (which is apparently very unusual). The best thing about this award? The crystal decanter of 1795 Baron Otard Extra Cognac! I will be writing a new book in 2022 to be on the bookshelves in early 2023. Maybe by then this pandemic will be past, and I can venture out once more to meet my readers. Much of the story is set in the West of Scotland, Kinlochleven, where in 2051 there is nuclear power. But Kinlochleven has an interesting past, as far as power innovations are concerned. Peter during research for an earlier title, Entry Island. Strangely, many of the things I have written about during a long career in TV and books have subsequently come to pass. In my early years, while storylining the Scottish soap opera “Take The High Road”, there was a sequence of spooky occurrences. I wrote about a character falling and breaking his arm. Three weeks later that actor fell from a ladder and broke his arm. In another story I wrote about a character becoming pregnant. The actress became pregnant. There was a lot of nervous laughter about it among the cast. Actors hoped I wasn’t going to kill off their character – and not just because of loss of earnings. I had an actor come to my door once and ask if I could write a story in which his character won the lottery.

My 1981 book, “The Man With No Face”, was set against Britain’s uncertainty about its future place in Europe. Ten years later my book, “The Noble Path”, followed refugees fleeing from war, taking to flimsy boats to cross treacherous bodies of water. Sound familiar? Wu He Peng had been appointed to this job as reward for catching four notorious criminals who had been robbing museums of priceless artefacts and smuggling them out of the country. One of the first things he did in his new job was make an eight-hour drama based on that investigation. He wrote it, produced it, and starred in it as himself, bringing him instant fame throughout China where the average nightly television audience is 500 million. But the story doesn’t end there. Because 42 years later, Philip Ziegler is still going strong, and still being published himself. His latest book, “ Olivier”, is the definitive biography of the actor Lawrence Olivier, and is published by Quercus who also publish my best-selling Lewis Trilogy.None of us have a voice. I have one tiny little voice in a sea of growling humanity!” Peter said, recalling that frustration. But how do you write about a subject so big and I’m a crime writer and readers don’t want to be preached at and I was well aware of all that. I decided to explore this illness through the character of a middle-aged woman, Ana, delving into her experience through a first person narration. Although not the principal character, she is central to the story. We discover that she was afflicted in early childhood with hearing problems, then diagnosed with Usher Syndrome in her teens, when she developed “night blindness”, which is often a precursor to vision loss caused by a disease known as retinitis pigmentosa, or RP. We accompany her on her nightmare journey into complete hearing loss and total blindness, and through her limited senses learn first hand about the book’s main antagonist when he takes her hostage. And it was the French version that was read by the book scout for award-winning young publishing house Quercus – a UK publisher that had not even existed when the book was first offered to British publishers. They immediately stepped in to buy the English language rights and were the ones to commission a further two books to create what has become known as The Lewis Trilogy. By the time I had returned in ’97 on that first research trip, English had become more widespread. Many restaurants were now featuring menus in English or Pinyin. And those ring roads were beginning to start filling up with more than taxis and buses and official vehicles. The great move away from the bicycle towards private cars was already underway.

And so we return to Luskentyre beach on the Isle of Harris, and a to man who is washed up without memory or reason… It took a month or two for the award itself to reach France, but here I am with the “Dagger in the Library”… in the library! Looking forward to 2022 This is a very special prize to win as it is for all my various books and series, and an endorsement from the readers, users and keepers of the UK library system. It’s easy to wax lyrical about the service that the enthusiasts who ran these stores provided for readers by offering good advice and astute recommendations, but speaking from personal experience the hosting they provided for authors will be difficult to replace.Those who are cutting funding to basketball, he says, are ignoring the widespread popularity of that game at grass roots level. Many clan chiefs were disposessed of their land and a new generation of landowner took over the vast Highland estates they vacated. The crofters, whose ancestors had worked the land for centuries, were seen as a burden. They made no money from the land, which provided subsistence only, and were unable to pay rent. So, with financial incentives from the government, this new breed of landowner systematically began to replace people with sheep, which were regarded as a more economically viable use of the land. Here is a video of me at the awards ceremony, receiving the Barry Award from George Easter. The video might not be very clear, but the audio quality is good enough to hear my speech. Then, with the development of my story, came his only clue – a map with the coffin road traced in marker pen. Filled with a deep sense of dread, he knows that following in the footsteps of the dead is the only chance he has to restore meaning to his life, and that his only hope is that the coffin road will lead him to revelation.

He added: “We have so little time left to save our world, and I wanted to give everyone the chance to express themselves in a song we can all sing, a song that might just make a difference. Particularly for the children, since this is the world the rest of us will be leaving them.” When I was 18 years old I made my first serious attempt to write a novel. I had written stories throughout most of my teenage years, including a teenage fantasy about the group I played in called “The Aristokrats”. The book was entitled “The Aristokrats in Spain”, and it ran to around 50,000 words. If nothing else, it taught me that I could write at length, but it could never have been described as serious. From there he moved into teaching, and while Vice Chancellor of the University of Illinois in Chicago, set up the Office of International Criminal Justice (OICJ) which reached out to law enforcement agencies throughout the world, exchanging ideas, co-operation and criminology students. I spent three months and read dozens of newspaper articles and reports and watched hours of video. It became apparent to me, the more research I did, that the more peril I realised the world was in, and the human race – and the future of the human race.A Winter Grave which is out on Thursday (January 19) is a book that was never supposed to happen. As Peter explains, he had made up his mind to retire. Their philosophy was to show police and their investigations in a good light. Cops were always the good guys, and the baddies always got caught. That was the propaganda element of the job. So nearly half a century later, I find myself on the same list, with the same publisher as the man who I have always considered to be my first and most important mentor.

However, here’s a piece of information that Godwin might have uncovered had he not been so journalistically challenged and blinded by his own ignorant prejudice: While explaining that the book was neither long enough, nor sufficiently good in construction or style, he went on to write, “But we do like it. It has a direct and emphatic narrative style and has an oddly memorable – even idyllic flavour about it. We feel you ought to go on writing, and would like to see anything you write in future – which may not sound very much, but is, I can assure you, a great deal more than we say to 95% of the people who send in their typescripts!” A Winter Grave and its message is going to be high profile in the next few weeks – it comes out on Thursday (January 19). Peter is doing a tour of talks that brig him to Inverness. And the book will be in every supermarket – and the top promoted book in Tesco’s. The “Crime Thriller Club Best Read” award was the last one to be presented and to be honest my mind was focused on the moment when it would all be over and a) I could visit the toilets and b) I could get out of the tie and suit. Peter – originally a journalist who became a scriptwriter, then producer of the Gaelic drama Machair, before embracing fiction – turned down contract offers for another book. Writer Peter May, returned with a new thriller embracing the challenge of setting it in the near future.For inspiration, and an authentic take on what it might be like to be deaf and blind, I delved into a book called “Deaf-Blind Reality – Living the Life”, edited by Scott M Stoffel, himself a deaf-blind sufferer. It presented extensive interviews with 12 victims from around the world, describing their experiences from childhood to adulthood, and sometimes old age, and gave me an extraordinary insight into their world. A world of bullying and neglect, by peers, and teachers, and society in general. It made me angry, and even more determined to cast light on their suffering through Ana. Since my last book tour of the US in 2010, the Los Angeles Mystery Bookstore in Westwood has gone under, as has Murder by the Book in Denver. In July, there was another virtual event. The British Crime Writer’s Association awards ceremony for 2021. This is all great news for the tiny publishing house Goliat Forlag who put so much effort and enthusiasm into the publication.