Ghosts of a younger self: Peter May speaks

This week I have a large feature on Scottish crime writer Peter May published in the New Zealand Listener. It really is a privilege to get to interview amazing writers and share more about them and their stories with readers in some high quality publications. I've been very fortunate over the past few years. New Zealand readers can grab a print copy of the Listener this week, or online subscribers to the Listener can read the full article from anywhere in the world (click here). I really enjoyed chatting to May late last year: about his latest novel RUNAWAY (inspired by his own teenage sojourn to London to follow his musical dreams, almost fifty years ago), the Lewis trilogy, his earlier screenwriting career, thoughts on crime fiction as quality literature, and much more - he is a fascinating and thoughtful man, as well as a heck of a good crime writer.

Ghosts of a younger self
It took 50 years for Peter May to turn a childhood dream into the plot of a thriller. He talks to Craig Sisterson.

It’s fitting that it was in a place of escapes and returns, among the soaring arches and rusting rail lines of Glasgow Central Station, that an idea Peter May had nurtured for 30 years finally coalesced. In the late 1960s, May had run away to London with his teenage friends. The dream: musical stardom. The reality: running out of money, returning north on a train with his best mate Stevie and being met by their fathers for “quite an extraordinary encounter” on Platform 1. May had marinated the idea of a novel ...

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE (Listener subscribers)

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Have you read any Peter May novels, and if so, what do you think of his storytelling? How much does the past play a part in our present? What does it take to elevate crime writing to top literature?