Peter May is an excellent novelist with a gift for scenic description. I’ve read a number of his novels with great pleasure. I think he may be trying to lose me as a reader now, but more about that below.

Fin Macleod, hero of The Black Loch, is a native of the Isle of Lewis, a former policeman now employed as a civilian in the city (I forget which city), doing computer forensics on cases of child pornography. The job is nearly killing him.

Then he learns his son has been arrested for the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl, back home at Stornaway on Lewis.

Years before, as a detective, Fin had returned to Stornaway when an old friend (married to Fin’s old girlfriend) was murdered. In his investigations, he learned that that friend’s son was not actually his, but Fin’s own. Fin ended up marrying the former girlfriend and getting to know Fionnlach, his new-found son.

Fionnlach had stayed in Stornaway and taught school there. Now one of his female students is dead, and it turns out Fionnlach had been having an adulterous affair with her. Her body was found floating in the Black Loch, marked by signs of rape. A witness saw Fionnlach fight with her on a cliff and knock her over the edge.

Fin drops his work and, together with his wife, travels to Stornaway to see what’s wrong. Their son won’t talk to them; he talks as if he’s guilty. The townspeople have already made up their minds.

Fin asks questions, mostly of old friends. The community has many secrets (for one thing, a lot of the young people seem to be the children of different men from their legal fathers). But one person in particular has deadly secrets to hide, at any cost.

There was much to enjoy in The Black Loch. I love the Scottish Isles, and Author May brings them and their people to dramatic life. The dialogue was very good, though Americans will have a little trouble with the dialect – as well as a lot of trouble pronouncing names (though a pronunciation guide is included).

My problems with the book were mostly personal. The depictions of the church were uniformly negative – though Fin makes it clear that he mainly dislikes the present minister, whom he knows to be a hypocrite, every mention of the church always includes some comment on how grim and barren and comfortless Calvinism is. As a Lutheran I can sympathize somewhat, but I thought he overdid it.

There’s also the political element. In this book and the previous May book I read, he made the choice to go full-on environmentalist. He seems to believe – no doubt sincerely – that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the planet.

The problem with this is that you end up with the old “Law & Order” cliché. If a certain type of character appears, you can always be sure that they’re going to be the culprit. Sad to say, that predictability was front and center in The Black Loch.

When all is said and done, The Black Loch is a good novel, but (in my opinion) the author is selling his birthright for a pot of message.

A criticism which (obviously) more than applies to me, too.