Tombstoning by Doug Johnstone

This latest review of another highly recommended read has been produced with the help of my parrot, Milly. She has been flicking pomegranate juice at me to aid inspiration. Let me assure you that pomegranate juice in the eye stings rather a lot! Little monkey!

Tombstoning by Doug Johnstone. July 2012. Epub £1.71. 256 pages (estimated).

This deliciously disturbing tale was first published by Penguin in 2006. In July of this year it became available in Kindle format and can be purchased in either version from Amazon.

TOMBSTONING is Doug Johnstone’s first novel and is simply fabulous. Although it is less polished than his latest book, HIT AND RUN (still my Eurocrime Number 1 for 2012), it radiates with the talent that Johnstone is chock-full of and I love it. This is another book that messes with your head: a sure fire way to get onto my favourites list.

David Lindsay was born and raised in Arbroath. His best friend falls off a cliff in mysterious circumstances just before his 18th birthday, and David is the last person to see him alive. Churning with more questions than answers, he turns tail and runs, all the way to Edinburgh, where he stays and tries to forget. One day many years later he receives an email, from a certain Nicola Cruikshank, that turns his comfortable, if tedious, life upside down. Nicola has news of a school reunion and David, or Dave, as he now calls himself, is invited. David’s heart does a double flip, as Nicola was the girl at school that he fancied. He nervously replies and ends up meeting Nicola for her to arm-twist him into going to the reunion. Delighted that Nicola is still extremely attractive, he agrees to go and a few Saturdays later finds himself driving northward on a journey that will bring him head on with his childhood traumas. Instead of being a cathartic putting to rest of the past, the trip uncovers a whole hornets’ nest of trouble and once again David finds himself seeing the broken body of a friend, dead at the bottom of the cliffs. Who, or what, is the cause of this latest ‘accident’? Its timing is too good to be a coincidence and, with a finger of suspicion pointing at him, David takes it upon himself to find out the answers.

By far the best part of TOMBSTONING, for me, is Johnstone’s vivid description of David’s feelings towards the school reunion and the subsequent behaviour of his supposed ‘grown up’ school mates, that were nasty back in the day and are still pretty unpleasant people. I love the way the story keeps you guessing and hoping that things turn out OK (that’s the thing with Johnstone – there is no guarantee of a happy ending). The central characters are well developed and likeable and the pace of the story keeps you hanging on, wondering.

I have given this book 4 stars in my Amazon review. While I like it enormously, it isn’t as good as Johnstone’s later offerings, so I can’t give it 5 stars. Having said that, I do think this author is awesome and am delighted to have two more of his books waiting patiently on my ‘to be read’ pile!

Links to reviews

Here are some links to reviews on Eurocrime that have been written for books by the authors I went to see at Bloody Scotland.....


Allan Guthrie Savage Night Slammer

Craig Russell A Fear of Dark Water, The Deep Dark Sleep

Karen Campbell Shadowplay, Proof of Life

Denise Mina The Field of Blood, The Last Breath

Ann Cleeves Silent Voices, White Nights

Peter May The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man

Gordon Ferris The Hanging Shed, Bitter Water

Russel MacLean The Lost Sister

The Black House by Peter May

I reviewed this awesome book for Eurocrime last year (see here) and it gives me great pleasure to put this review on my blog. Man (otherwise known as Mike) wrote this review recently and is my first guest blogger.

I hope you enjoy the review, and the book. If you've not read it yet you should hurry up as the final part of the trilogy is due for release in January 2013!!!

Upon arriving at Bloody Scotland, Scotland's first crime fiction festival, in September, I resolved not to buy any more books ("any more" as I'd a hefty stack back at home). But, the temptations of the text proved too strong and I came back with a few, one of which was The Blackhouse by Peter May.

Fin Macleod is a detective with Lothian and Borders Police based in Edinburgh. On top of investigating a grisly, unsolved murder Fin is struggling to both accept the death of his young son in a hit-and-run and to save his marriage. Despite these woes, Fin's guv dispatches him to the remote Isle of Lewis on the North-west of Scotland, as the local bobbies have a murder that bears a startling similarity to Fin's Edinburgh case. For Fin this is not only a new case, but a return home after many years of self-imposed exile. As he investigates, and true to the genre, he meet his childhood friend, Artair Macinnes and sweetheart, Marsaili, old memories return to haunt him, and long buried secrets from the past are dragged into the present.

The Blackhouse is an atmospheric read. The wind-swept, wave-battered, spare Lewis, populated by tough, God-fearing folk provides a suitably brooding landscape for Fin's investigation. May provides plenty of local colour (much of it shades of black and grey) with the stand-out being a gruelling description of Lewismen's annual guga harvest on the barren Atlantic rock of An Sgeir (An Skerr - non-Gaelic speakers, like me, will find the pronunciation page most useful!) May's use of third-person for Fin in the present and first-person for Fin in the past, helps us to contrast then and now and how our childhood experiences shape our whole lives, for better or worse. My only complaint was a sudden ending, but no worry, the next in the trilogy, The Lewis Man, is now out, and the conclusion, The Chessmen, arrives in January.

Just the read for a dark autumn evening, 4/5.

A big thank you to Amanda for allowing me onto her blog :-)