Review: Coffin Road

Coffin Road by Peter May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another enjoyable read from Peter May. Whilst not my favourite of his works, it was still great.

I’ve pretty much worked through all of Peter May’s work now. I just need to finish the China thrillers and then I’m up to date. Reading his Lewis trilogy first ensured I would read more of his work, and whilst nothing has quite lived up to the first Lewis book, I’ve still had fun with everything he’s written. Some has been more enjoyable than others, yet all have ensured he remains on my list of favourite authors. I doubt he will ever be my number one author, but he’ll always be an author I’ll pick up.

Coffin Road sits around the midline in terms of where it sits on my list of favourite Peter May books. It isn’t quite the Lewis trilogy, but I liked it more than the Enzo Files. It was better than Runaway, yet it wasn’t quite Entry Island. Middle ground. Of course, middle ground for Peter May is still higher than my average middle ground. Worth a read if you’re a Peter May fan; a good starting point if you’re new to his work but not the first book I would direct you towards.

As with all of his books, Coffin Road has a good dose of mystery. You have multiple aspects to the story, which you know are interconnected, yet you’re not quite sure how they interconnect. You have your ideas but it’s only as the story progresses that you start to see where the links can be found. In this one, you have three main mysteries. First, who is the man washed up on the beach? As we follow him, more and more contradictory information comes to light. There is little by way of information, and each new thing that comes to light can be questioned. Second, who is to blame for the murder? Oddly enough, the murder is the aspect of the story with the least information. It is clearly linked in with the rest of the story, but you don’t know the why. Third, what is the truth behind the absent father? We have a question of whether he truly committed suicide or whether there was more to his disappearance than meets the eye. As more comes to light to this aspect of the story, you quickly become tangled in a web of deceit that is so much larger than one person leaving their family behind.

These three aspects come together brilliantly, working together to slowly unfold the main mystery of the book. Parts reminded me of the first China thriller, in the way there was something much larger than any of the individual characters at play, but it was far from a carbon copy of the book.

Overall, it was a great read. As I said, it’s not my favourite Peter May book, but it was more than worth reading.

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