The Night Gate – Peter May
In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house. The deaths occurred more than seventy years apart.
Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo Macleod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter. Two extraordinary narratives are set in train – one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of Occupied France; the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown.
And Enzo’s investigations reveal an unexpected link between the murders – the Mona Lisa.
Tasked by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle to keep the world’s most famous painting out of Nazi hands after the fall of France in 1940, 28-year-old Georgette Pignal finds herself swept along by the tide of history. Following in the wake of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa as it is moved from château to château by the Louvre, she finds herself just one step ahead of two German art experts sent to steal it for rival patrons – Hitler and Göring.
What none of them know is that the Louvre itself has taken exceptional measures to keep the painting safe, unwittingly setting in train a fatal sequence of events extending over seven decades.
Events that have led to both killings.
The Night Gate spans three generations, taking us from war-torn London, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Berlin and Vichy France, to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020. In his latest novel, Peter May shows why he is one of the great contemporary writers of crime fiction.
My thanks to Sophie at Midas PR for my review copy and for the opportunity to join the blog tour for The Night Gate.
The Night Gate is an Enzo Macleod story. Amazon describes it as “The Enzo Files Book 7” today I describe it as my introduction to Enzo and the books of Peter May. Actually “introduction” is a tad misleading as we own several Peter May books and Mrs Grab has been reading them before me. From her feedback I already knew I would be in for a treat with The Night Gate – as usual Mrs Grab was quite right.
This story felt epic in scale. Not only do events take place around France but the action also moves to Scotland and we get some trips to Nazi Germany too. The narrative has a timeframe of seven decades taking in Europe during the dark days of World War Two and spinning forward to modern day where Europe is contending with a global pandemic. This is one of the first books I have read which has incorporated Covid-19 into the narrative and I very much enjoyed that the author has acknowledged it but not made it a dominating factor in the story. The pandemic is referenced, the requirement to mask up and the inconvenience it causes are noted but that’s it. It’s a thing to be dealt with.
The Night Gate sees Enzo invited to assist the police investigate a brutal and bloody murder. His expertise is recognised and the local police feel his contribution would be beneficial. Readers spend a little time with the vicitm as he approaches his final minutes of life and we understand how the murder ocurred, we just don’t know who was responsible.
Not content with giving Enzo one murder to consider, Peter May has a second dead body waiting to be uncovered. This is not a recent murder, however, as the bones found appear to date back to the 1940’s – the corpse was likely an officer in the German army and he was buried in France with a bullet wound in the side of his head. As the story unfolds and the identidy of the officer becomes clear Enzo realises there may be a connection between the two dead men. What could the connection be? Well it all revolves around the most famous painting in the world…the Mona Lisa.
During the Second World War the French were terrified of the prospect of Paris falling and the Germans getting their hands on the treasures of the Louvre. The jewel of the collection was undoubtably Da Vinci’s masterpiece so the staff at the Louvre arranged for the painting to be shipped out of Paris and hidden in rural France, shipped from place to place to make it harder to find. The principle focus of the wartime scenes is Georgette (George) Pignal. She meets General De Galle in London and he tasks her with the responsibility of keeping the Mona Lisa away from the Germans.
George travels to Scotland where she receives training in the Western Isles to prepare her for life as an undercover operative in occupied France. When she finally returns to her homeland she is soon face to face with two German officers both have also been instructed to find the Mona Lisa but one is working for Hitler and the other for Göring. These three characters are pawns in a bigger game and each serves a powerful master, failure is not an option. The parts of the story which feature George really had me gripped and I loved reading about her – the uncertainty around what may happen to her made her perils seem more vivid. Due to the passage of time between George’s story and Enzo’s the reader knows George will be dead in 2020. Knowing a key character for the story isn’t going to be alive in the modern day scenes raises the tension – George could be killed at any stage and you hope the author makes good use of that freedom. No spoilers though – grab yourself a copy of The Night Gate to learn about George’s fate.
A power struggle for the ownership of the world’s most famous painting was not the story I had been expecting from the opening chapters but Peter May gripped my attention from the outset and I was hooked. As I mentioned at the start of my review, this was my introduction to Peter May’s books. A quick look at the catalogue of his earlier work shows that I have a lot of catching up to do. However, if I enjoy the other books even half as much as I enjoyed The Night Gate then I know I have hours of reading pleasure stretching out in front of me – I can’t wait to get stuck in.
Returning fans will be delighted to be reunited with Enzo Macleod. New readers can be confident of picking up The Night Gate and knowing they can jump straight into the action and still enjoy this clever and exciting thriller.
The Night Gate was published by Riverrun on 18 March 2021 and is available in hardback, digital and audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B089CGRL5M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
