Review: ENTRY ISLAND, Peter May

• 
  this edition provided by my local library
  
• Published by Quercus UK 2014
• ISBN 978-1-78206-221-9
• 534 pages

Synopsis (Publisher)

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. 

My Take

Sime  Mackenzie probably should have been given leave rather than assigned to this case. Insomnia combined with his marriage breakdown and then the fact that his wife is the CSI for the case should have been enough to excuse him. But he is chosen because he speaks English as do the inhabitants of Entry Island.

When he meets the wife of the dead man he is convinced he has met her before. He also wears a signet ring that she recognises. It turns out that there is a perfectly rational explanation, but I get ahead of myself. When the rest of the team become convinced of Kirsty's guilt, because all the evidence Sime accumulates points to her, Sime feels they are wrong.

Meanwhile the author takes the opportunity to go back to the Highland Clearances to prove to us that history can repeat itself.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

• THE RUNNER
• VIRTUALLY DEAD
• FREEZE FRAME
• 4.7, THE BLACKHOUSE
• 5.0, THE LEWIS MAN
• 4.5, EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE
• 5.0, ENTRY ISLAND
• 4.9, COFFIN ROAD
• 4.8, LOCKDOWN