Peter May

Peter May (born 20 December 1951) is a Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer.

He is the recipient of writing awards in Europe and America.

The Blackhouse won the U.S. Barry Award for Crime Novel of the Year and the national literature award in France, the CEZAM Prix Litteraire.

The Lewis Man won the French daily newspaper Le Télégramme's 10,000-euro Grand Prix des Lecteurs.

May was asked to adapt the book as a television series for the British television network the BBC, and left journalism in 1978 to begin to write full-time for television.

May's novel The Reporter became the prime-time 13-part television series entitled The Standard in 1978.

May went on to create another major TV series for the BBC, Squadron, a drama involving an RAF rapid deployment squadron.

In the following fifteen years, May earned more than 1,000 TV credits.

He created and wrote major drama serials for both BBC and the Independent Television Network in the UK including Machair which he co-created with Janice Hally for Scottish Television.

The long-running serial was the first major television drama to be made in the Gaelic language and was shot entirely on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

The show, which May also produced, achieved a 33% audience share and regularly appeared in the top ten in the ratings in Scotland, in spite of the fact that it was broadcast with English subtitles because only 2% of the population of Scotland are Gaelic speakers.

During his time working in television, May wrote the novels Hidden Faces (1981) and The Noble Path (1992), and in 1996 he quit television to write novels.

After quitting television May wrote a series of six novels known as the China Thrillers.

To research the series, May made annual trips to China and built up a network of contacts including forensic pathologists and homicide detectives.

He gained access to the homicide and forensic science sections of Beijing and Shanghai police forces and has made a study of the methodology of Chinese police and forensic pathology systems.

As a mark of their respect for his work, the Chinese Crime Writers' Association made him an honorary member of their Beijing Chapter.

He is the only Westerner to receive this honour.

He has also contributed a monthly column to the Chinese Police Magazine Contemporary World Police.

The books were first published in the UK between 1999 and 2004 and subsequently published worldwide in translation.

In 2007 he won the Prix Intramuros.

This prize is unique in France as it is awarded by juries of readers made up of prisoners in French penitentiaries.

The books under consideration are reduced to a shortlist of 6 finalists and the authors of the shortlisted books then have to travel to various French prisons to be interviewed by panels of detainees.

In 2007, May was the only non-French author in the shortlist.

He received the prize at the annual Polar&Co literary festival in Cognac.

The Enzo Files is set in France and is centred on the work of half-Italian, half-Scottish Enzo Macleod.

This former forensic scientist, now working as a biology professor at a French university becomes involved in applying the latest scientific methods to solve cold cases.

May tried to ensure authenticity in the details of his books by researching in France just as he did in China.

When writing The Critic – which involves the wine industry and is set in Gaillac, France – May took a course in wine-tasting, picked grapes by hand, and was invited by the winemakers of the region to be inducted as a Chevalier de la Dive Bouteille de Gaillac in December 2007.

In 2014, Entry Island won both the Deanston's Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the UK's ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year Award.

May's books have sold more than two million copies in the UK and several million internationally.

Peter May was born in Glasgow.

From an early age he was intent on becoming a novelist, but took up a career as a journalist as a way to start earning a living by writing.

He made his first serious attempt at writing a novel at the age of 19, which he sent to Collins where it was read by Philip Ziegler, who wrote him a very encouraging rejection letter.

At the age of 21, he won the Fraser Award and was named Scotland's Young Journalist of the Year.

He went on to write for The Scotsman and the Glasgow Evening Times.

At the age of 26, May's first novel, The Reporter, was published.

New editions were published for the United States and UK in 2016/17 with an introduction by May explaining the historical setting of the books.

Peter May lives in France and his China Thrillers have received several nominations for awards in that country.

In April 2016, after 15 years of living full-time in France and a connection with the department of the Lot that goes back more than 40 years, May was welcomed as a French citizen at a ceremony of naturalisation by Catherine Ferrier, the Préfète of the Lot.

While working on his standalone thriller Virtually Dead, May researched the book by creating an avatar in the online world of Second Life and opening the Flick Faulds private detective agency.