A Winter Grave: a chilling new mystery set in the Scottish highlands

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stars rounded up. Brrr! Bring out the hot chocolate and afghan and turn up the heat for this chill-inducing thriller! A Winter Grave is set in the Scotland of 2051 where the effects of climate change we've been warned about have become a reality. Many parts of the world are underwater or so hot as to be uninhabitable and the world's population is on the move. What May does with out being preachy, is to get you to focus on the possible outcomes of global warming. Let me be clear this is a mystery novel with a unique setting - our possible future. In 2051, after a catastrophic climate change, vast swathes of the planet are underwater, and Scotland is a changed place. Old-school detective Cameron Brodie tries to keep up but knows his time is limited. On the day that he learns he has terminal cancer, he is also asked to look into the death of a journalist found encased in ice.

This book is set in 2051 and climate catastrophe has arrived as it has long been predicted it would. The author presents a fascinating vision of things that may come - floods, famine, vast areas of land becoming unlivable, the deaths of millions of people across the globe. No idea. But someone was out there in the hall listening to us talking in here. I don't know how much they could hear, or why they would want to, but they ran off through the snow when I went after them with my torch.' I worried, initially, that May was being drawn into the controversial climate change debate. Not at all. Instead he makes a massive comment on it, one which I - and I hope many others - have worried about, and will continue to argue. I don't want to give the plot away, so I won't comment further on how the plot develops. Suffice it to say that this is food for thought, and if you care about the future of the world, this book is essential reading, because it is a stark reminder of what ought to be being considered. Brodie is a detective sent to investigate the body of a journalist found frozen in the snow in Scotland . The book is set in 2051 and climate change has flooded many areas and increased snowfall in others. Scotland has its independence and has made itself self sufficient in energy by building a nuclear power plant. This power plant is near where the body was found. There’s more going on here, Brodie is estranged from his daughter who just happens to be married to the local police officer. When a body is discovered on a mountain in a remote part of Scotland detective Cameron Brodie & pathologist Dt Sita Roy are sent to investigate.As Brodie investigates the death of a man found frozen in the ice of a snow tunnel, it becomes clear his enemy is not just the person or persons responsible for the man’s death but the weather as well. Ferocious storms have become a frequent occurrence for the residents of Kinlochleven, resulting in power cuts and the loss of communications with the outside world for days at a time. Venturing out into a particularly violent storm, Brodie witnesses the extreme weather conditions for himself. ‘He seemed to be driving headlong into the gale. Hailstorms flew out of the darkness like sparks, deflecting off the windscreen… He could barely see the road ahead of him, hail blowing around and drifting like snow on the recently cleared tarmac.’ It is the year 2051. Warnings of climate catastrophe have been ignored, and vast areas of the planet are under water, or uninhabitably hot. A quarter of the world’s population has been displaced by hunger and flooding, and immigration wars are breaking out around the globe as refugees pour into neighboring countries. A young meteorologist takes a work based trek up a mountain and is faced with a dead body, frozen in ice. This chance discovery leads to a rollercoaster of secrets and intrigue and the body count starts to mount in this bleak and remote landscape.

This is a compelling blend of an environmental/political thriller with a puzzling mystery. There’s humour although this rightly diminishes as danger levels rise, there’s plenty of tension, excitement accompanied by a building menace and peril. There are some good plot twists that keep you hooked, the pace is fast and there are some Hollywood action movie worthy scenes which give a dystopian feel. Throughout it all there is atmosphere in abundance in the Highlands setting with cruel weather to further highlight the hazardous situations. The story mainly takes place in 2051, when global warming has devasted our planet. Much of the earth is underwater, with coastal regions wiped out. Elsewhere, central inland areas have become too hot to be habitable. Millions of people are on the move as refugees, trying to escape famine and flooding. Immigration is causing war and political turmoil. Melting ice has stopped the warming effect of the Gulf Stream, resulting in northern Europe, including Scotland, being hit by raging blizzards and ice storms. Once again, Peter May has returned to Scotland with a complex novel that combines climate apocalyptic changes, murder mystery and a domestic situation that has left a policeman’s relationship with his daughter severed for the past 10 years. As the story begins, we are in the year 2051, in a very altered Scotland and a very altered world. While the equatorial world is now too hot to sustain life, Scotland has become a country divided between rain and blizzards. Coastal areas are gone. Travel is by new evolved methods that go limited distances. But crime still exists.With comms and the internet still down, and the Ice storm having cut off the village, Brodie continues to investigate this puzzling murder. But certain incidents add an atmosphere of menace, and then there’s another murder, which won’t be the last before Brodie departs the Kinlochleven. Having read many of your books and having a house in SW FRANCE I really look forward to meeting you. What follows is a story that take place in both 2051 and 2023 the changes in times were sometime jarring but once I got use to it I settled into the story. There were plenty of twists and turns and I was no where near guessing the ending. In 2003 I read Firemaker, the first thriller by Peter May, and although the details are a bit fuzzy, I still remember how impressed I was with this book. And for those here on GR who read Dutch: I reviewed Firemaker, The Killing Room (De moordkamer) and Chinese Whispers (De seriemoordenaar). A Winter Grave is set in Scotland but it’s not a Scotland we would recognise. The year is 2051 and Scotland has achieved independence and rejoined the European Union. However, at the same time, the effects of climate change on the world have become all too obvious. Whilst parts of the world are suffering extreme heat, prompting the migration of millions of people from Africa and Asia to Europe, great swathes of Scotland are now under water due to rising sea levels caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheets and the country now has the climate of northern Norway.