Enzo Macleod Books in Order: How to read Peter May’s series?

Discover the enthralling “Enzo Macleod” series by acclaimed Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer Peter May, featuring a captivating mix of whodunits, investigations, thrills, suspense, and humor.

Meet Enzo, a fascinating character, half-Scottish, half-Italian, and formerly a top forensic scientist in Scotland, now navigating life as a university professor in Toulouse, France, with a compelling backstory of loss, estrangement, and resilience.

How to read the Enzo Macleod Series in Order?

Although each novel in the Enzo Macleod book series (aka The Enzo Files) can be read independently, the lives of the many characters change as the series progresses.

1. Extraordinary People (aka Dry Bones) – Italian and Scottish ancestry Formerly one of Scotland’s leading forensics authorities, Enzo MacLeod now resides in Toulouse and holds a position as a university professor. He has a Scottish daughter who is alienated from him and a French daughter who he has raised on his own. He was divorced in Scotland and widowed in France. As if his life wasn’t already convoluted enough, a bad bet on the effectiveness of forensic science soon has him unintentionally searching for answers to some perplexing cold cases.
2. The Critic (aka A Vintage Corpse) – American wine critic Gil Petty’s body is discovered strung up in a Gaillac vineyard in France, clad in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine. Deciphering Petty’s cryptic reviews, which could make or ruin a vineyard’s reputation, is the key to solving this unsolved murder, according to forensic expert Enzo Macleod.
3. Blacklight Blue – Enzo Macleod, who has been given a terminal diagnosis, is running out of time to solve the most puzzling of all unsolved French murders. Enzo nearly kills his daughter, is robbed, and is eventually taken into custody. Someone is attempting to discredit him. He is being accused of murder by someone. Killers from the past will do anything to prevent Enzo from solving the case, so he needs to use all of his forensic expertise to do it quickly.

4. Freeze Frame – To fulfill a promise he made long ago to a dead man, forensics specialist Enzo Macleod journeys to a small island off the coast of Brittany to look into his 20-year-old murder. In an interesting turn of events, Enzo discovers that the victim’s study, the crime scene, has remained unaltered ever since. Macleod must work to uncover information that prior investigators missed in the cramped surroundings of the island’s tight-knit community where the residents have no wish to see this traumatic case resurrected.
5. Blowback – Marc Fraysse, the best chef in France, invited the world’s food media to his outlying restaurant in the center of France seven years ago to make an announcement that he claimed would stun the industry. Instead of a statement, the brilliant chef had been slain, shocking the reporters who left without learning what message the chef was trying to convey or who might have killed him.
6. Cast Iron – The body of 20-year-old Lucie Martin was dropped into a beautiful lake in the west of France in 1989 by a murderer. A drought fourteen years later amid an intense summer heat wave revealed her remains. Her slaying never resulted in a conviction. The hardest case that forensics expert Enzo Macleod has ever been asked to crack is currently being reviewed.

7. The Night Gate – The body of a man who was shot in the head is discovered in a tranquil French village by tree roots. A renowned art critic is brutally murdered in a nearby residence a week later. The separation between the deaths was about 70 years. Enzo Macleod, a forensics specialist, is asked by a colleague to examine the former’s scene, but he soon becomes involved in the latter’s investigation.

Please remember to bookmark our article about the Enzo Macleod reading order if you liked it. Also, you may want to check out the DCI Ryan series and the Bob Skinner series.