The Blackhouse

This novel by prolific and award-winning author Peter May is the first of the "Lewis Trilogy," a series of murder mysteries set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The landscape is harsh and the living is hard on these islands and kids growing up there often cannot wait to get away. This was certainly true for Fin McLeod, who had extra incentive because his parents had died when he was young and he was raised by an aunt who had little time for him and expressed no sympathy or affection for the bereaved child. Still he had his friends, and a girl who liked him from the first grade, so it seemed not all bad. Until the eve of his departure for university, when his friend's father and Fin's tutor for college prep told Fin and Artair (his son and Fin's best friend) that the boys had been chosen to join the guga hunt--a right of passage that involves sailing across 50 miles of empty ocean to an island where seabirds nest and then killing and bringing back hundreds of the young birds as a delicacy for the islanders. It is an event decades old in tradition, held onto all the more firmly in the face of animal rights protesters. For Fin and Artair, it will be a turning point in their relationship and their lives.
Fin does indeed go off to university in Glasgow but can't engage and eventually becomes a detective with the Edinburgh CID. When a grisly murder is committed on the Isle of Lewis, identical in many details to one recently investigated in Edinburgh, Fin is the obvious choice--even though he has recently lost his only child. His return launches a story told alternately in the past and the present, with Fin's history being revealed a piece at a time while he continually confronts painful reunions in the present. This is a dark book and I wonder if living so far north, like the Scandinavians and the Scots do, focuses people on the darker corners of human nature. The ending of this book came as a total surprise to me. Don't read this book if you are looking for a happy ending. Do read it if you like noir detective stories.
Interestingly, this book was bought up by a French publisher after being turned down by numerous British publishers. Subsequently, it was bought by numerous publishers and has been translated into several languages. Glowing reviews from The New York Times, The Scotsman, the NY Journal of Books, and Publishers Weekly. It was also named one of Kirkus' "10 Best Crime Novels" for 2012. More info on Peter May at Wikipedia.