Peter May, Author of the Lewis Trilogy, Dies at 74

Peter May, the Scottish crime novelist whose Lewis Trilogy turned the Isle of Lewis into an international setting and whose books sold about 15 million copies, died on Friday, September 25, 2026, in the south of France. He was 74. His wife, the writer Janice Hally, announced the death and said she had "no words" to express the loss. BBC News reported it on September 28. His publisher, riverrun, confirmed he had died on Friday night. A final novel, Island of the Dead, is scheduled for January 2027.

He was born in Glasgow on December 20, 1951, and he built the career twice: once in television, and once, after British publishers had said no, in France.

A book the UK turned down, and a trilogy Quercus then asked for

The Blackhouse introduces Fin Macleod, a detective born on Lewis and living in Edinburgh, sent home to a murder that opens the reasons he had left. A number of UK publishers rejected it. It appeared first in French in 2009, where it was a commercial success, and won the 2011 Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE, a French readers' prize for the best novel by a European author. Quercus then bought the rights. The English edition came out in 2011, reached the UK bestseller lists, and the publisher asked for a trilogy. May joked that this would be difficult, because murders on Lewis happen about once every 50 years. The Lewis Man (2011) and The Chessmen (2012) followed. The Bookseller said the book led to the Lewis Trilogy and that his work became closely tied to Lewis and the Hebrides.

The Guardian, in an obituary by Brian Wilson, said later island novels included Coffin Road (2016), I'll Keep You Safe (2018) and The Black Loch (2024), and that Visit Outer Hebrides found the books increased visitor numbers. Lewis acquired a Peter May Trail of the locations. The China Thrillers, published from 1999 to 2010, had already won him readers and prizes in China. The Bookseller also cited the French-set Enzo Files. During the pandemic he returned to a novel he had written about 15 years earlier, about a killer hunt in a London shut down by a global pandemic. Publishers had rejected Lockdown as too far-fetched. It came out in 2020.

He was particularly successful in France, his publisher said, and he published 26 books with Quercus. The Guardian's obituary put his lifetime total higher, at 71 books, a figure that takes in a wider career. The number the publisher and the BBC both used for the audience is the same: about 15 million copies worldwide.

From a Glasgow newsroom to a Gaelic soap, and one more novel

May won Young Journalist of the Year at 21. His first novel, The Reporter, grew out of newsroom work and was adapted as a BBC drama, which took him out of newspapers and into television. At Scottish Television he wrote more than 200 episodes of the daytime soap Take the High Road, the Guardian reported, and he became a scriptwriter and producer. With Hally he developed Machair, a subtitled Gaelic soap set on Lewis, after the channel sent them to the island to see whether a Gaelic drama was possible. They lived for a time in a campervan at Ness. Machair ran for six years. May directed. Hally was the main writer. The people he listened to on the island became the material of the novels years later.

He had announced his retirement more than once. In July 2026 he finished Island of the Dead, set on a fictional archipelago about 40 miles into the Atlantic that resembles St Kilda. He had been planning a farewell tour of Scotland and Lewis to meet the publication in January. Jon Riley, his publisher and friend, said May had been looking forward to sharing that retirement with his wife, and then found there was one more novel in him. Riley said May "inspired enormous affection" in readers and in the people who worked with him. "His kindness, generosity and largeness of spirit, loyalty, engagement with life, and the world, made him a much-loved, as well as much-admired figure. He is irreplaceable." Riverrun issued the same words.

First Minister John Swinney said: "I have hugely enjoyed Peter May's evocative books set in the Hebrides. His description of events in some of the most precious places in our landscape was so stunning. I extend my sympathy to his family."

He is survived by Hally, whom he married in 1990, and by a daughter, Carol, from his first marriage, to Katrina Hutcheson, which ended in divorce.

The publishing story is the rejected manuscript. The Blackhouse did not become a phenomenon because a London editor saw it first. It became one because a French edition created the evidence, Quercus bought in, and a writer who had already spent years in television was willing to build a trilogy on an island he had been told would not sustain one. The last book is still on the 2027 list.

Image: Peter May in Strasbourg receiving the Prix Cezam, October 15, 2011. Photo by Burntfingers, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0. Placed on a blurred extension of the same photo.

Sources

• BBC News: Scottish crime writer Peter May dies aged 74 (September 28, 2026)
• The Bookseller: Crime writer Peter May dies (September 29, 2026)
• The Guardian: Peter May obituary (October 5, 2026)