Peter May Is Suddenly No More

I can hardly believe this to be true! Scottish playwright and screenwriter Janice Hally, the wife of award-winning novelist Peter May, posted word this morning on Facebook that May died on September 25 at age 74. She added this tribute from “his long-term [British] publisher and dear friend, Jon Riley”:

Riverrun, an imprint of the John Murray Group, has announced the sad news of the death of the Sunday Times bestselling Scottish crime writer Peter May, on Friday night at his holiday home in the south of France.

Peter May was one of the most popular, and loved writers of crime fiction of his generation, and his books have sold around 15 million copies around the world. The novel which he had announced would be his last, Island of the Dead, is to be published in January 2027.

May began his career as a journalist in Scotland, winning Young Journalist of the Year aged twenty-one, and published his first novel, The Reporter, in 1976, at the age of twenty-six. After it was adapted as a BBC drama series, he quit journalism for television, and in the fifteen years that followed he became a successful scriptwriter and producer on two seminal series, Take the High Road and the Gaelic-language, Isle of Lewis-set Machair. It was while working on location on Machair, that his love for the Hebrides, which informed and influenced so much of his writing, was formed.

He returned to fiction with a series of China-set thrillers, which was followed by the French-set Enzo Files, both of which featured characters who reflected his growing interest in forensic science. However, it was the publication of the Lewis-set thriller The Blackhouse in 2011, that brought international fame, and bestselling success, and resulted in The Lewis Trilogy. He published a bestseller almost every year between The Blackhouse and his last book, The Black Loch, in 2024. His writing will always be associated with the Isle of Lewis, and the Hebrides.

Peter published twenty-six books with Quercus, and his work was hugely successful in his adopted homeland of France, where his work garlanded many prestigious literary awards.

Peter was a talented musician, and in 2025 he released a CD,‘Towards the Light’, which reflected in song many of his interests as a novelist.

Although he had announced his retirement, which he was looking forward to sharing with his beloved wife, the writer Janice Hally, May found there was one more novel in him, and he delivered Island of the Dead in July this year. He was preparing for a farewell tour of Scotland and Lewis to coincide with publication in January 2027.

Peter May was not only one of the best writers of crime fiction we had, but he inspired enormous affection in his readers and in those lucky enough to work 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.

I was fortunate enough to share dinner with May and his wife during a couple of his publicity tours to the States. He was delightful—funny, brilliant, and a real wine aficionado—and an evening spent in his company was guaranteed to be memorable. Like so many others, my discovery of Peter May’s novels began with The Blackhouse, and I kept reading them from then on. Between myself and Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim, we interviewed him twice, with the results posted here, here, and here. And May contributed a couple of essays to this page, one relating the background of his 2015 novel, Entry Island, and the other telling us about his work on 2016’s Runaway.

Peter May will be sorely missed, indeed.

READ MORE: “‘Irreplaceable’ Crime Author Peter May Dies in South of France,” by Jane Bradley (The Scotsman).