Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times raved: "Peter
May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." Now
Peter May takes us to a small island off the coast of Québec
with an emotionally charged new mystery.
When a murder rocks the isolated community of Entry Island,
insomniac homicide detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light
aircraft at St. Hubert airfield bound for the small,
scattered chain of Madeline Islands, in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, as part of an eight-officer investigation team
from Montréal.
Only two kilometers wide and three long, Entry Island is
home to a population of just more than 100 inhabitants, the
wealthiest of whom has just been discovered murdered in his
home. Covered in her husband's blood, the dead man's
melancholy wife spins a tale for the police about a masked
intruder armed with a knife.
The investigation appears to be little more than a
formality--the evidence points to a crime of passion,
implicating the wife. But Sime is electrified by the widow
during his interview, convinced that he has met her before,
even though this is clearly impossible.
Haunted by this strange certainty, Sime's insomnia is
punctuated by vivid, hallucinatory dreams of a distant past
on a Scottish island 3,000 miles away, dreams in which he
and the widow play leading roles. Sime's conviction soon
becomes an obsession. And despite mounting evidence of the
woman's guilt, he finds himself convinced of her innocence,
leading to a conflict between the professional duty he must
fulfill and the personal destiny he is increasingly sure
awaits him.
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