Enter John Mackenzie, a vastly over-qualified investigator from Glasgow who happens to speak fluent Spanish and Arabic and is famous for saying exactly what he thinks at all times regardless of the consequences.. He is seconded in to help the Spanish police capture Clelland before he can carry out his threat against the family. However, the story really hinges on Ana, Cristina’s aunt who suffers from a rare condition called Usher Syndrome which renders the recipient both deaf and blind. This character elevates the novel above a simple cop mystery and gives an interesting insight into the life of the deaf-blind and how they communicate by manual alphabet or computers which can turn messages into braille. Although Ana dreams in colour she wakes every morning to discover anew that she is living in a world of total silence and darkness.
Despite being set amidst a world of mafia, drugs and money laundering, A Silent Death, manages to remain a human story about real lives. Written in the third person May fills out each character to a point where the reader starts to understand how they became the people they are and makes the reader think about what kind of person they would be if they had endured the same experiences as these characters.
May keeps the reader guessing how it will all turn out to the very end with an exciting culmination in Gibraltar and once again delivers a novel worthy of its credits.