Book Review: I’ll Keep You Safe

I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE | Peter May
03.06.2018 | Quercus USA
Rating: 3/5 stars

Niamh and Ruairidh MacFarlane are the co-owners of a popular Scottish textiles company known as Ranish Tweed. The couple is in the midst of promoting their brand in Paris when Niamh receives an anonymous email telling her that Ruairidh is having an affair. Suddenly Niamh begins to suspect her husband’s strange behavior as proof of this affair and trust that this email is true. Shortly after confronting Ruairidh about the affair, she watches him flee their hotel in the car with his mistress and be killed by a car bomb.

All she can hear is the ringing in her ears. A high-pitched tinnitus drowning out all other sounds. The chaos around her has no real form.

The pair are from a small Scottish village and have known each other all their lives. They believe that fate and destiny brought them together, but now Niamh needs to know what has torn them apart. The police initially suspect Niamh of being a scorned lover who set the car bomb as an act of revenge. Niamh is able to plea her innocence, which means the killer is still on the loose. As the police and Niamh try to put the pieces together of what happened, Niamh flashes back through time by looking back on how Ruairidh and she came to be. Is Niamh’s life in danger? Who killed Ruairidh?

Did people really change, or was it just your perception of them? And if that was true, had you ever really known them in the first place?

I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE is the story of a couple who has fought their way through many obstacles in life to not only be together, but to create and grow a successful company. I the wake of becoming a widow, Niamh takes the reader on a trip down memory road as scenes from her past are intermingled with the present murder investigation. May brings an atmospheric quality to his work unlike anyone I have read before. I felt like I was in Scotland feeling the salt water hit my face from the comfort of my couch. Despite the vivid details of this novel, the story fell short for me. It was in no way a bad story, but one that I found predictable and a little over the top at the end. I was able to not only guess the murder, but also the twist revealed in the final pages. I believe that this book would be better suited for the occasional crime fiction reader, as I think my constant fandom of the genre resulted in me guessing the ending. This is my second experience with May’s work and I will definitely be continuing to read his books.