A Horrid Dream

It was my first day in a new high school. I was searching for the place to pick up my class schedule. It seemed very important that I know my schedule, and get to that first class on time.

 

Nobody seemed to know where I could get my schedule. There was almost nobody in the school at all. I found myself in a hallway with aluminum wire racks against the wall. Someone gave me a packet and I opened it. But instead of my class schedule, the packet contained a set of gym clothes, including Jockey shorts in the school colors. On closer inspection, the Jockey shorts were much too small… so small that a newborn couldn’t have squeezed into them.

 

I kept plodding through the corridors, looking for someone who could tell me my schedule, beginning to suspect that it wasn’t the first day of school at all.

What does all this mean? Perhaps it symbolized a deep-seated yearning for order and structure in my life. But there was no structure. I was trying desperately to follow the rules. But there were no rules.

The Blackhouse By Peter May

368 pages
SilverOak, October 2012


I read a lot of fiction. But seldom does a book grab and hold me like The Blackhouse. Once the story got going, I literally couldn't put it down. On one memorable night I read straight through until midnight. Next day, I found some uninterrupted quiet time, shut myself in the guest room and finished it. Guys who live for reading learn to savor experiences like this.

I also did a couple of things I always do when a book really appeals to me: I started researching it on the Internet. And I wrote a blog post about it. This blog post, in fact. And I've even begun to toy with the idea of a trip to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where this story is set.

This is a thriller and a murder mystery. There's a decent plot summary behind the link above, so I won't go into that here. As a mystery it's very well executed, but as the story unfolded that  became secondary to my enjoyment of The Blackhouse. This is more than just a crime novel. Far more appealing to me were the bleak island setting and great local color. In that sense it reminded me of Tawni O’Dell’s novel Back Roads [discussed elsewhere in this blog].

But without question, the best part of this book to this reader was the bittersweet subplot involving Detective Inspector Fin MacLeod and his old flame Marsaili MacDonald. Their pain and regret over teenage cruelties and roads not taken struck a deep chord within me. So did their disapppointing experience at the University of Glasgow, where Fin discovers he's not really interested in the arts, or in studying, or in Marsaili. This side of the story brought back sad feelings from my own youth. Surprisingly, nobody mentions those plot elements in any of the online discussions I've read. Perhaps I'm just a sentimentalist at heart.

I was very happy to learn that the sequel, The Lewis Man, features Fin. I hope it brings back Marsaili as well. For me, the romantic tension she brought to the book added a lot to this reading experience, although I wonder whether he can maintain it in the sequels. I'll know soon enough. I've just ordered The Lewis Man and The Chessmen from Amazon.co.uk (not available yet in any form in the U.S. as far as I can tell).

I've read Ian Rankin and Denise Mina.  I've long been interested in Scottish writers and settings. In part, that's due to my years in pipe bands and many memorable Scots I met as part of that effort. There's a well-known bagpipe tune called Stornaway. My first pipe band played it frequently, often with the better-known Skye Boat Song. Stornaway is in the area where much of The Blackhouse takes place. Small world.

Author's web site: http://maypeter.com/