Review
Spending time with Peter May's charming and clever Enzo Macleod in Brittany is pure pleasure. In May's fourth installment of the
Enzo Files series, the remote Ile de Groix, with its turbulent coast, rough weather, and laconic and secretive residents, tests Macleod intellectually and physically as he attempts to solve a case so cold it's frigid. At the same time, Macleod struggles with a mercurial lover and her life-altering secret.
May establishes his mystery with confidence and carries us toward his final satisfying revelations with sure pacing and adroit storytelling. The story opens in Munich, 1951, as a doctor leaves his wife, children and medical practice behind to disappear into the dark, barely escaping shadowy pursuers. May then carries the reader to Morocco, then Paris, where we meet Macleod, then to Brittany - moving us back and forth in time - until...
Beyond the Book
Waardenburg Syndrome
Half Italian, half-Scottish forensic expert Enzo Macleod has distinctive good looks: long hair with a streak of white pulled back in a ponytail, and eyes of different colors. This is because Macleod has a genetic syndrome, called Waardenburg Syndrome, affecting hair color, eye pigmentation and sometimes hearing. It's so named for the Dutch eye doctor, Petrus Johannes Waardenburg, who first noticed that people with differently colored eyes often had a hearing impairment, and defined the syndrome in 1951.
Overall, the syndrome affects an estimated 1 in 42,000 people; about 1 in 30 students in schools for the deaf have Waardenburg syndrome. The condition is usually inherited from one parent with the altered gene that carries it, though in...
