I loved reading Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy and his later novels so much that I decided to go back and read the Enzo files series. ‘Extraordinary People’ is so different from the other Peter May novels that I’ve read that it doesn’t feel like it was written by the same author.
Enzo Macleod is a half-Italian half-Scottish man living in France. He left his wife, child and Career behind in Scotland when he fell in love with Patrice. Now he works as a University biology lecturer and lives with his 20 year old daughter Sophie, while his first daughter Kirsty refuses to speak to him. And, he still dreams of his former career as a forensic biologist.
Enzo has entered into a bet that he can solve a ten year old cold case using modern forensic methods. Jacques Gillard was a brilliant man, a teacher of others and famous. He went missing ten years ago and the case was never solved. Enzo’s friend journalist Roger Raffin wrote about Gillard and others in a book of cold cases.
As Enzo re-examines the case, he relies more on logic than forensics and gradually finds clues that lead him to further clues like a puzzle. He gathers an unlikely team of amateurs to help him solve the riddles that have been set.
But as he gets closer to finding answers, it seems that someone doesn’t want him to solve the case. Soon his own life and that of someone he loves is in danger.
This was a fun novel even though the whole scenario was extremely unlikely. I enjoyed the novel a lot even though it was not typical of the Peter May that I’ve come to know. Some of the atmosphere that May is able to capture was evident in this novel.
I expect a lot of the characters who were introduced in this novel to appear in future novels in the series and I’m looking forward to meeting them again in ‘The Critic’.
Book Published 2006
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