Peter May
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Audio Tape - ISIS (2003) |
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The Firemaker
Three murders. Two lovers. One burning truth.
Margaret Campbell is a forensic pathologist from Chicago. Li Yan is a Beijing detective with a horribly burned corpse on his hands. She has a broken life behind her and a lonely future, dedicated to her profession, ahead. He has survived two decades of violent change by marrying himself to a career, which now promises, at last, to bring him the respected place in Chinese society that his family lost in the Cultural Revolution.
Neither of them is ready for the consequences of asking the wrong questions about the dead man; the ones that lead to the terrifying truth.
Originally from Massachusetts, Laurence Bouvard trained at LAMDA and made her professional debut creating the role of Maria Elena Holly in the original cast of the West End musical, Buddy. Her other theatre credits include leading roles in Cyrano de Bergerac, Wuthering Heights, Speed-the-Plow, and Persephone in Stravinsky’s Persephone at the BBC Proms. Her appearances on TV include EastEnders and The Tomorrow People.
Unabridged:
12 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 14 hrs 25 mins
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Audio Tape ISIS (2003) |
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The Runner
A top Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of an international event. An Olympic weightlifter dies in the arms of his Beijing mistress. Both men’s deaths are connected to an inexplicable series of ‘accidents’ that have taken the lives of some of China’s best athletes.
Detective Li Yan finds himself in charge of what could be his last investigation for the Beijing police. Hampered by uncooperative officials and dogged by a vindictive rival fore his job, his only hope of a breakthrough is a champion runner, the sole member of the Chinese athletics team who seems willing to talk. But she will only talk to American psychologist Margaret Campbell – and now the runner has disappeared.
‘A fascinating series’ Sunday Telegraph
Originally from Massachusetts, Laurence Bouvard trained at LAMDA and made her professional debut in the West End. Her TV appearances include The Tomorrow People and EastEnders. Laurence has recently recorded The Dud Avocado for BBC Radio 4.
Unabridged:
10 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 12 hrs 25 mins
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Audio Tape - ISIS (2002) |
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The Killing Room
When the mutilated and dismembered bodies of eighteen women are discovered in a mass grave in Shanghai, detective Li Yan is sent to establish if the corpses relate to an unsolved murder in Beijing.
Once more, American pathologist Margaret Campbell finds her personal relationship with Li compromising their professional collaboration. She arrives in Shanghai to find her partnership with Li threatened by another woman - the deputy head of Shanghai’s serious crime squad.
Faced with the grisly proposition that the murdered women have been subjected to ‘live’ autopsies, the three realise they are tracking a monster of inhuman capacity. And the closer they get to the killer, the closer they come to realising their own personal nightmares.
Originally from Massachusetts, Laurence Bouvard trained at LAMDA and made her professional debut creating the role of Maria Elena Holly in the original cast of the West End musical, Buddy. Her other theatre credits include leading roles in Cyrano de Bergerac, Wuthering Heights, Speed-the-Plow, and Persephone in Stravinsky’s Persephone at the BBC Proms. Her appearances on TV include EastEnders and The Tomorrow People.
Unabridged:
12 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 13 hrs 30 mins
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Audio Tape ISIS (2002) |
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Snakehead
American pathologist Margaret Campbell returns from China to her home soil only to be faced with a truck full of dead Chinese and an inevitable confrontation with her past.
Beijing detective Li Yan, now based at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, is dispatched to find out how his fellow countrymen suffocated in a sealed refrigeration unit in southern Texas - only to find himself face to face with the woman who walked out of China, and his life, to return to the US.
Working together again and wrestling with the demons of their past, Li and Margaret discover that the immigrants were unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. They must race against time to defuse a biological time-bomb that threatens to wipe out not only their future but that of mankind.
Originally from Massachusetts, Laurence Bouvard trained at LAMDA and made her professional debut in the West End. Her TV appearances include The Tomorrow People and EastEnders. Laurence has recently recorded The Dud Avocado for BBC Radio 4.
Unabridged:
10 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 10 hrs 50 mins
About The Author
Peter May, winner of the Scottish Young Journalist of the Year Award in 1973, went on to become a television screenwriter, creating three major TV series - The Standard, Squadron and the Gaelic-language drama serial, Machair. He has published seven novels; The Reporter, based on the BBC TV series, The Standard; Fallen Hero, a novelisation of the Granada TV series of the same name; Hidden Faces, a political thriller set in Brussels (published as The Man With No Face in the U.S.); and The Noble Path, a very human story played out amidst the ruins of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. The first of his China novels, The Firemaker, a scorching thriller set in contemporary Beijing, resulted from extensive research in China where he received unprecedented access to the Chinese police. The sequel, The Fourth Sacrifice, was published in hardback and paperback in 2000, and the third in the series, The Killing Room, came out in hardback in December 2000 and paperback in May 2001. He is married and lives with his wife, writer Janice Hally, in rural Argyll, Scotland, and in France.
Peter May spent six months in Beijing and travelling across China as part of his research for the books and continues to visit regularly. He also gained unprecedented access to the normally Chinese police force, due in part to his friendship with Commissioner Wu He Ping, a former policeman from Beijing. Peter’s trips to China have also provided him with a wealth of stories – from drinking competitions with Shanghai detectives to banquets where the menu included deep fried scorpions encrusted in ants. (He is a keen cook, and does all the cooking at home, specialising in Chinese dishes.)
Peter also discovered that many crime writers in China are policemen, who produce their own magazine of short stories every two months, called The Woodpecker. This may be due to the fact that young police officers take classes in Western crime fiction - Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are favourites. Peter is an honorary member of the Beijing Chapter of the Chinese Crime Writers’ Association.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
The Firemaker
(ISIS,
2003)
The Runner
(ISIS,
2003)
The Killing Room
(ISIS,
2002)
Snakehead
(ISIS,
2002)
The Firemaker
WebPage: 
by Peter May
