COFFIN ROAD, an unposted 2017 review of the best PETER MAY novel I've read

COFFIN ROAD
PETER MAY
riverrun press
$6.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In his latest mystery set in Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, award-winning author Peter May spins a tale about three disparate cases that may or may not be linked...

On the remote Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, a man washes up on a deserted beach, hypothermic and completely disoriented. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his condition is a map of the island showing a desolate, ancient path called the Coffin Road. With a sense of dread and no clear idea what lies at the other end, he knows he must follow the trail if he has any hope of discovering his identity.

Meanwhile, homicide detective George Gunn makes the rough ocean crossing to a remote, sea-battered lighthouse on a rock in the northern Atlantic, twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides, to investigate a brutal murder. Despite its isolation, the tiny island has seen its share of tragedy: more than a century earlier, three lighthouse keepers disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. And now there is a new tragedy, and Gunn must figure out what happened.

At the same time, a teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that her father would willingly abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that suicide had nothing to do with it.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER IN 2016. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ten years ago I flew through all 400pp of this read, and excitedly left this note:

Far and away the best book of Peter May's that I've read. An exciting and involving read. More later. Or earlier, I suppose, depending on which end of the telescope you're looking through.

When I went looking for my notes made to write my weekly summary post for GBBO over on LibraryThing, I found my unposted review! (Not the notes I wanted, though.) So I'm posting it here for this year's #Deathtober blogging, and in sad acknowledgment of Author May's death on 25 September 2026. I suspect I never came back to post it because that was about the time I ran seriously afoul of the Spoiler Stasi abd decided "hell with it" and forgot it existed.

The story opens on a beach. Don't get too excited, it's a Scottish beach so colder than a Republican's heart. A man awakes cold and confused:

I have no idea where this is. And for the first time since consciousness has returned, I am aware, with a sudden, sharp and painful stab of trepidation, that I have not the least notion of who I am.

That breathless realisation banishes all else. The cold, the taste of salt, the acid still burning all the way up from my stomach. How can I not know who I am? A temporary confusion, surely? But the longer I stand here, with the wind whistling around my ears, shivering almost beyond control, feeling the pain and the cold and the consternation, I realise that the only sense that has not returned to me is my sense of self. As if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance.

Nothing like the smell of the North Atlantic Ocean in the morning. As he searches for a name (it's Neal, for now), for a way to discover who he is, ID or any other details, belongings...anything...he encounters a woman who seems to know him as she walks near the beach. Sally helps Neal-for-now home, some data starts coming into his slippery memory and mostly slides right out again having nothing to stick to:

They say that all any of us are is the sum total of our memories…Take them away and all you are left with is a blank. Like a computer without software.

It's true, and it scares me, as it does most people or writers would not use the trope with the regularity they do (particularly in thrillers where the need for the main character to act fast and to have a great urgency to do something is acute). Our hero reflects, "{it's a}s if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance," as he attempts to unferstand what on Earth has landed him in a situation where:

Nothing, absolutely nothing since I found myself washed up, semi-conscious, on the Traigh Losgaintir, has made sense. My memory loss. My failure to find a single clue to my identity, beyond my name, even in my own home. My affair with Sally. The book on the Flannan Isles mystery that I am not writing. Beehives on the coffin road. My missing boat...someone trying to kill me. And someone else stepping in to save me. The weight of it all is very nearly crushing.

As he puts together who he is and what he is doing, why he us at great risk of death, many truths and dacts sort themselves into an extremely ugly pattern:

Politicians and political parties, particularly in America, rely on {corporate criminals} to fund election campaigns. They are powerful lobbyists. Which is why the US has not banned the use of neonicotinoids, and thousands of tons of the stuff are still being used on crops there every year. Biggest usage is on oilseed rape. They coat the seeds with insecticide, so that, when it germinates, the insecticide is diffused throughout the plant, including the nectar and pollen that’s harvested by the bees.

Neal-for-now's discovered, conveniently near a cursed murder site in a lighthouse, evidence that chemical companies researched neonicotinoids and knew what effect the pesticide would have:

‘The first summer I was here, I landed one day to find that the Lighthouse Board had sent in decorators to paint the place. Everything was opened up. The guys were okay with me taking a look around and we got chatting. The forecast was good, and they expected to be here for a few days. So I spun them the story about writing a book and said I would probably be back tomorrow. And I was. Only this time with a pack of Blu-tack. When they were having their lunch, I took the keys from the inner and outer doors and made impressions. Dead simple. Had keys cut, and access to the place whenever I wanted thereafter.’ The final panel falls away in my hands, and I reach in to retrieve a black plastic bag. I hand it up to {Bad actor}, and he peels back the plastic to look inside. As I stand up, I lift one of the wooden panels. I know that this is the one chance I will get, while he is distracted, and I swing the panel at his head as hard as I can. The force with which it hits him sends a judder back up my arms to my shoulders, and I actually hear it snap. He falls to his knees, dropping the hard drive, and his gun skids away across the floor. {Bad actor} is so startled, she barely has time to move before I punch her hard in the face. I feel teeth breaking beneath the force of my knuckles, behind lips I once kissed with tenderness and lust. Blood bubbles at her mouth. I grab {a hostage he's rescuing} by the arm and hustle her fast down the corridor, kicking open the door and dragging her out into the night. The storm hits us with a force that assails all the senses. The wind is deafening, driving stinging rain horizontally into our faces. The cold wraps icy fingers around us, instantly numbing. Beyond the protection of the walls, it is worse, and I find it nearly impossible to keep my feet as I pull {the hostage he's rescuing} off into the dark. Only the relentless turning of the lamp in the light room above us provides any illumination. We turn right, and I know that almost immediately the island drops away into a chasm that must be two or three hundred feet deep. I can hear the ocean rushing into it. Snarling, snapping at the rocks below and sending an amplified roar almost straight up into the air. I guide {the hostage he's rescuing} away from it, half-dragging her, until we reach a small cluster of rocks and I push her flat into the ground behind them. I tear away the tape that binds her wrists, then roll her on to her back to peel away the strip of it over her mouth.

As you'll see from my rating there were some issues with the way the story unfolded, plot holes, a looseness with the timeline; but you also see how exciting the story is. This is proof Author May began writing in the vineyards of television...you can see the above in your inner TV room, I'm sure...before retiring to the vineyards of the South of France to write exciting novels. I like this one best of all of them I've read.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (3rd edition)...still infuriating after twenty years, maybe even more

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (3rd edition)
JOHN PERKINS
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$21.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The riveting third edition of this New York Times bestselling title expands its focus to China, exposes corruption on an international scale, and offers much-needed solutions.

Extensively updated, this edition features twelve new chapters, including a new introduction, preface, and study guide. The book brings the story of economic hit men (EHMs) up-to-date and focuses on China’s EHM strategy.

EHMs are highly paid professionals who use development loans to cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars and force them to serve US interests. Former economic hit man John Perkins gives an insider view into this system. With a truly global perspective, this book offers powerful revelations on extremely timely elements, including the third economic hit man wave that is sweeping the world and the way China optimizes US EHM models to make them a more dominating force. China’s strategy is even more dangerous since it’s successful at enticing lower income nations.
Perkins also reveals how we can transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy. He encourages China’s leaders to apply the Confucian ideal of serving the family to the global community to end the EHM strategy. The book ultimately provides a source of hope and inspires readers to participate in a new era of global cooperation.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When I read the first edition back in 2004, it was an eye-opener. Remember that those were the Cheney years, where the forces of business skulduggery were very much ascendant. Their plan was, and is, to do the maximum amount of economic damage in order to impoverish and control the working people around the world with insecurity, debt slavery, and social Othering to build xenophobia and mistrust.

It suits China to go big on these proven strategies because there are so very many Chinese people...but like the Western economies, they figured without the population collapse their old people living longer and having fewer babies while they still can making the existing plans increasingly unworkable. Global climate change is not helping them, or their plans.

No need to cry for the failure to get immediate control has had on the awful people who think only of their own short-term profits,though...the plans have changed enough to make a whole new level of economic misery possible.

Reading this book was intensely angering all over again, as John Perkins uses his insider knowledge to explain the new goals and tactics to reach them. I thought humans were awful before I read the first edition. After reading the third, with its laser focus on the newest practitioners of manipulative business shenanigans, I was ready to stow away on the next SpaceX rocket. I do not care where it is going. As long as it is away from the kind of horrible, amoral, truly sociopathic scum that run things in the ways that John Perkins reveals.

However.

The John Perkins-revealed point is, now that we know, and can see, the manipulations and behaviors being deployed against our Body Politic, we can take action. Call it out, call your congressional district office, call the White House...anyone who HAS to listen...and make it clear that you want to see substantive change in the way business is regulated. Make it clear you want to see your government stand up and fight against the looting of the treasury and the planet both. Then go to the polls and VOTE THEM OUT. You still have that power, and it scares Them leaky, and they are trying to take the vote away from you. Stay active, or accept the much, much worse world the Economic Royalists are trying to cram down your throat.