Peter May Books In Order - Books In Order (2024)

1. The Firemaker (1999)
2. The Fourth Sacrifice (2000)
3. The Killing Room (2000)
4. Snakehead (2002)
5. The Runner (2003)
6. Chinese Whispers (2004)
7. The Ghost Marriage (2010)

1. Extraordinary People / Dry Bones (2006)
2. The Critic / A Vintage Corpse (2007)
3. Blacklight Blue (2008)
4. Freeze Frame (2010)
5. Blowback (2010)
6. Cast Iron (2017)
7. The Night Gate (2021)

1. The Blackhouse (2009)
2. The Lewis Man (2011)
3. The Chessmen (2012)

1. The Reporter (1978)
2. Fallen Hero (1979)
3. The Man with No Face / Hidden Faces (1981)
4. The Noble Path (1992)
5. Virtually Dead (2010)
6. Entry Island (2013)
7. Runaway (2015)
8. Coffin Road (2016)
9. I’ll Keep You Safe (2018)
10. A Silent Death (2020)
11. Lockdown (2020)

1. Hebrides (2013)

• The Firemaker(1999)

• The Fourth Sacrifice(2000)

• The Killing Room(2000)

• Snakehead(2002)

• The Runner(2003)

• Chinese Whispers(2004)

• The Ghost Marriage(2010)

• Extraordinary People / Dry Bones(2006)

• The Critic / A Vintage Corpse(2007)

  See Also

  Peter Robinson, RememberedPeter Robinson's DCI Banks books in orderRed Dwarf Books In Order - Books In Order

• Blacklight Blue(2008)

• Freeze Frame(2010)

• Blowback(2010)

• Cast Iron(2017)

• The Night Gate(2021)

• The Blackhouse(2009)

• The Lewis Man(2011)

• The Chessmen(2012)

• The Reporter(1978)

• Fallen Hero(1979)

• The Man with No Face / Hidden Faces(1981)

• The Noble Path(1992)

• Virtually Dead(2010)

• Entry Island(2013)

• Runaway(2015)

• Coffin Road(2016)

• I’ll Keep You Safe(2018)

• A Silent Death(2020)

• Lockdown(2020)

• Hebrides(2013)

The Firemaker

Margaret Campbell, a Chicago forensic pathologist, has been invited by the Chinese government to teach at the Beijing police university. She has accepted the six week assignment with misgivings but is desperate to escape a troubled life in America. Arriving in Beijing, she checks ‘nothing to declare’ on the health declaration they gave her on the plane nothing, that is, ‘except a broken heart and a wasted life, neither of which was contagious.’ She gets off to a bad start when her car knocks senior detective Li Yan off his bicycle. In a furious clash, he dresses her down in perfect English. But Li soon finds himself reintroduced to Margaret by his superiors when the newly promoted detective’s first case requires Margaret s special expertise to identify a horribly burned corpse. Thrown together to track down the killer, Margaret and Li must bury their personal and cultural differences when they uncover a conspiracy that threatens not only their lives, but the lives of millions.

The Fourth Sacrifice

Margaret Campbell had finally decided to leave Beijing and the man she loved and return home to the States. She had first come to Beijing to conduct a seminar on her specialty, forensic pathology, for the city’s police. The invitation turned out to ask for more than she expected; she was thrust into the search for a murderer. This was how she met and came to fall in love with the Beijing police detective Li Yan. Although they began as enemies, the attraction between them was overwhelming until personal tragedies pulled them apart. Now the police need an answer to a series of gruesome murders. Four men have been killed; the first three were Chinese and the fourth man was born in China but became an American in his youth. All were victims of what looks like ritual sacrifices. The U.S. ambassador practically forces Margaret to work once more with Li Yan. She buries her pain and turns to a new admirer for her free time an American archaeologist who is making a television documentary. As Margaret and Li Yan investigate, they come closer and closer to finding the truth behind the killer s executions. They also come closer to a killer who will sacrifice anyone to conceal a secret. This second in the China Thriller series is another testament to Peter May s ability to write captivating characters that move stealthily through Beijing s vibrant and dangerous setting.

The Killing Room

Peter May’s thrilling new China novel brings together Beijing detective Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret Campbell for the third time. When the mutilated and dismembered bodies of eighteen women are discovered in a mass grave in Shanghai, Li is sent to establish if the corpses are related to an unsolved murder in Beijing, and he finds the most horrifying catalog of killings ever uncovered in the Middle Kingdom. Once more, Margaret is unsure of her mercurial relationship with Li, and if it will threaten their professional collaboration. Having just suffered the heartbreak of burying her father, she arrives in Shanghai to find any partnership with Li threatened by another woman named Mei Ling. Born in the Year of the Tiger, Mei Ling seems to have her claws firmly fixed in Li. How can Margaret, a mere foreign devil, compete with Mei Ling, the deputy head of Shanghai s serious crime squad?Faced with the grisly proposition that the murdered women have been subjected to live autopsies, the three soon realize they are tracking a monster of inhuman capacity. The closer they get to this ruthlessly cold blooded killer, the closer they come to realizing their own personal nightmares. Peter May combines edge of the seat suspense and a brilliantly evoked picture of modern China to create an unstoppable thriller.

Snakehead

In this fourth of Peter May’s acclaimed China Thrillers, American pathologist Margaret Campbell is faced with a truck full of dead Chinese immigrants and an unavoidable confrontation with her past. Beijing detective Li Yan, now based at the Chinese embassy in Washington, is dispatched to find out how his fellow countrymen suffocated in a sealed refrigeration unit in southern Texas only to find himself face to face with the woman who walked out of China, and his life, to return to the U.S. Tasked to work together again to find out who is behind the $100 million trade in illegal Chinese immigrants, Margaret and Li Yan discover that the bodies in the truck were unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. Peter May’s China Thrillers books have won critical acclaim. As a mark of their respect for his work, The Chinese Crime Writers’ Association made him an honorary member of their Beijing Chapter, the only Westerner to receive such an honor. May is married to writer Janice Hally and lives in France. www. petermay. co. uk

The Runner

A top Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of an international event, shattering his country’s hopes of victory against the Americans. An Olympic weightlifter dies in the arms of his Beijing mistress, a scandal to be hushed up at the highest level. These two deaths could be a tragic coincidence or something more sinister.

When Beijing detective Li Yan discovers that these are not the first of China’s athletes to die, he brings American pathologist Margaret Campbell out of retirement to find out if natural causes may be concealing very unnatural deaths.

The key to the case lies with a champion runner, the only member of the athletics team prepared to talk. But when The Runner disappears, time starts to run out for Li Yan to catch the killer.

Chinese Whispers

His victims are young, beautiful and viciously mutilated. He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. The media and terror sticken public are demanding the arrest of the Beijing Ripper and Li Yan, the head of Beijing’s serious crime squad, has been put in the spotlight. American pathologist Margaret Campbell is invited to perform an autopsy on one of the victims and her results send shockwaves through the investigation. Then Li begins receiving personal letters from the killer, and his life and career start falling apart. The need to uncover the Ripper’s identity becomes paramount if he is to save himself and his family. Peter May’s terrifying new China thriller pits Li Yan and Margaret Campbell against an unscrupulous foe who could prove to be their deadliest enemy yet. This is the sixth book in the China Thrillers.

Extraordinary People / Dry Bones

What has happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher who trained some of France’s best and brightest at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration as future Prime Ministers and Presidents vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. Talk about your cold case.

The mystery inspires a bet, one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland can ill afford to lose. The wager is that Enzo can find out what happened to Jacques Gaillard by applying new science to an old case.

Enzo comes to Paris to meet journalist Roger Raffin, the author of a book on seven celebrated unsolved murders, the assumption being that Gaillard is dead. He needs Raffin’s notes. And armed with these, he begins his quest. It quickly has him touring landmarks such as the Paris catacombs and a chateau in Champagne, digging up relics and bones. Yes, Enzo finds Jacques Gaillard’s head. The artifacts buried with the skull set him to interpreting the clues they provide and to following in someone’s footsteps–maybe more than one someone–after the rest of Gaillard. And to reviewing some ancient and recent history. As with a quest, it’s as much discovery as detection. Enzo proves to be an ace investigator, scientific and intuitive, and, for all his missteps, one who hits his goals including a painful journey toward greater self-awareness.

The Critic / A Vintage Corpse

Several years ago, Gil Petty, the world’s number one wine critic, went missing during a tasting tour of the little known wine region of Gaillac. Three years ago, his body was discovered, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Brotherhood of the Order of the Divine Bottle and preserved in red wine before being planted like a scarecrow in a vineyard in southwest France. His murderer was never found. Possible clues to Petty’s murder lie in his reviews, but they are locked behind the seemingly unbreakable code he invented to keep them secure from prying eyes prior to publication. A leak to the public would have allowed wine speculators to reap rich rewards. Scots exile and former forensics expert Enzo Macleod reopens this well chilled case to discover that the genteel world of winemakers hides a business driven by greed, envy, and desperation. Fortified by copious quantities of wine, Enzo hunts an elusive murderer who is quite prepared to kill again. Peter May won the Scottish Young Journalist of the Year Award at 21, and had his first novel published at 26. He then left journalism and became one of Scotland’s most successful and prolific television dramatists. The Critic is the sequel to Extraordinary People and second in the Enzo MacLeod series. Peter May is married to writer Janice Hally and lives in France. www. enzomacleod. com

Blacklight Blue

Enzo MacLeod, a Scot teaching on a faculty at Cahors in southwest France, confidently bet that he could use his expertise to crack seven notorious murders described in a book on cold cases by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin. Enzo has in fact solved the first two crimes.

But the third is far from his mind right now: he’s just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he s become the victim of someone who seems intent on destroying his credit and his relationships and getting him arrested for murder. This is one instance where his Scottish stubbornness might pay off.

Having established a safe house to protect his loved ones, besieged now as it were, he sets to work. Are his personal woes somehow connected to the digging he s done into the brutal murder of a rent boy in a Paris apartment sixteen years ago, as Raffin has described? What further remnants of evidence can he review and can he stay alive long enough to catch the long hidden killer? This is the third installment in the Enzo MacLeod series.

Freeze Frame

A promise made to a dying man leads forensics ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who’s been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man’s heir has preserved for nearly twenty years. The dead man left several clues there designed to reveal the killer’s identity to the man’s son, but ironically the son died soon after the father. So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin that Enzo rashly boasted he could solve he’s been successful with the first three. It takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines. An attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder but still the viable suspect, a crime scene frozen in time, a dangerous hell hole by the cliffs, and a collection of impenetrable messages, make this one of Enzo’s most difficult cases.

Blowback

The Blackhouse

The Isle of Lewis is the most remote, harshly beautiful place in Scotland, where the difficulty of existence seems outweighed only by people’s fear of God. But older, pagan values lurk beneath the veneer of faith, the primal yearning for blood and revenge. When a brutal murder on the island bears the hallmarks of a similar slaying in Edinburgh, police detective Fin Macleod is dispatched north to investigate. But since he himself was raised on Lewis, the investigation also represents a journey home and into his past. Each year the island’s men perform the hunting of the gugas, a savage custom no longer necessary for survival, but which they cling to even more fiercely in the face of the demands of modern morality. For Fin the hunt recalls a horrific tragedy, which after all this time may have begun to demand another sacrifice. The Blackhouse is a crime novel of rare power and vision. Peter May has crafted a page turning murder mystery that explores the darkness in our souls, and just how difficult it is to escape the past.

Virtually Dead

Crime scene photographer Michael Kapinsky is a man whose first life is in a mess. But his second life is about to get a whole lot messier. Staggering under the financial burden left by his recently deceased wife, Michael struggles to come to terms with her death until his psychologist persuades him to enter a virtual world called Second Life to participate in a new kind of group therapy. Once there, his persona, Chas Chesnokov, discovers that victims whose crime scenes Michael has attended in the wealthy Southern California resort of Newport Beach have had their avatars clinically executed in the virtual world. Co opted into the Twist of Fate Detective Agency, Chas embarks on an investigation with an exotic dancer and escort girl. They uncover a series of killings and a financial scam that is netting the murderer millions of dollars. And when Michael is tempted by money that mysteriously appears in Chas’s Second Life account, both his real and his virtual lives are in danger.