The Chessmen (Lewis Trilogy, #3) – Peter May

The Chessmen, is sadly, the last of the trilogy featuring Fin MacLeod, a former policeman who has returned to the island of his birth.

I can’t praise this series of books enough, the writing is fantastic, the plots surprising and well paced and the characterisation brilliant. In The Chessmen Fin has a problem, he needs his old friend Whistler to stop poaching at part of his new role in security for a wealthy landowner. Together they witness the aftermath of a freak occurence, a loch has drained of water and a light aircraft has been exposed. Again secrets from the past are slowly revealed with devastating consequences.

Although I’m sure you could read this as a stand alone I believe it is the slow layer upon layer of tales told from the past and their effect on the present that makes this a true trilogy rather than a series of books. This one does justice to the previous two; The Blackhouse: Book One of the Lewis Trilogy and The Lewis Man: Book Two of the Lewis Trilogy. There is no crime novel quite like these; a real treat of a book.