Where to start on the Scottish Trail?
As I’ve already said, my slight preference tends to be for American fiction and characters but there is a huge amount of British material, much of which I will cover from time to time. However, being Scottish, I do have an affection and considerable admiration from the wealth of crime and related fiction which has emerged over the years from Scottish authors. John Buchan, William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre and many more. Let’s look at them now.
Some of you might be surprised that I’ve mentioned John Buchan just now and some of you (maybe even many of you) may never have heard of him! Others amongst you may just see him as someone from the dark ages that you could never imagine appealing to you. It may even be that some of you who do know something of him will have rejected him as some member of a bygone upper-class elite who could not possibly have any relevance to modern times or to the broad genre of fiction that interests us. Finally, some of you might have found yourselves using words such as fascist or racist about him. So, with that wonderful introduction, why have I even mentioned him?
Well, the easy thing for me to say would be ‘try him and see’ and, apart from anything else, his books are free on Kindle! Of course, they are from a different time, surrounding the First World War, so they are a bit old fashioned and the language is unfamiliar but, if it is excitement, cliff-hangers and twists which you didn’t see coming that you’re looking for, I think he’s worth a go. Some of you will have come across him in his most famous book, ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’, and there is plenty of excitement in that. However, if, like me, you have seen one of the several films made of the story, I would say that you probably won’t enjoy the book all that much. I’m not very good at reading books after I’ve seen the films and I was really disappointed by the Godfather and the Day of the Jackal (two excellent books) because I had seen the films beforehand.
So, if you haven’t seen the film try the Thirty-Nine Steps first, not least because it introduces you to Richard Hannay, Buchan’s main hero, and, in my opinion, a reflection of how the author saw himself! After that, just take your pick and you will find more with Hannay but also with his crew of friends and contemporaries such as Sandy Arbuthnot and Sir Edward Leithen. Try the Dancing Floor, the Three Hostages, Greenmantle, Huntingtower and Mr Standfast.They are very much from and about another, earlier time and I don’t necessarily expect you to like them as much as I did but I hope you enjoy them and they will let you see many similar plots and sets of circumstances in the modern books you read but set in a different era. It’s also worth mentioning a current author, Robert Harris (not the one you’re thinking of!), who has written a couple of new Richard Hannay books, trying very hard and relatively successfully in my view, to stick to Buchan’s style and approach. Just my opinion but he’s not bad although, with all due respect to him, his books are not up to the standard of Buchan. Look out for the Thirty-One Kings and Castle Macnab but only once you’ve tried the real thing!
Ian Rankin and Rebus – Just an Introduction Just Now
So that’s fine and an introduction to the Scottish side of the business of writing crime fiction. However, getting up to date, what have we got on the shelves, real or virtual? Without any question, in my view, the master of Scottish detective/crime fiction over the last twenty-five years is Ian Rankin who introduced us to his tough, irascible and literate cop, John Rebus. I just don’t know how he’s done it but he’s managed to keep us waiting for each new volume to come out, every year or so, and he’s kept our interest and enthusiasm alive even though Rebus has got older and even retired. I’m sure we must be getting to the end of the line and Rankin has begun to introduce us to new characters, but I certainly wouldn’t assume that there aren’t a few more Rebus stories to come! It’s worth spending a bit of time looking at the Rebus collection but, before that, if we’re trying to trace the evolution of modern Scottish crime fiction, there is someone else who needs a mention.
The Late, Great William McIlvanney
In the early 1970s, when I was a student in Edinburgh, as I mentioned earlier, I read a lot of Agatha Christie and Alistair Maclean as an escape from the economic concepts and ideas which I was studying! I think I must have been discussing this need for escapism with someone who suggested that I should try a book called Laidlaw by a writer called William McIlvanney, who was an English teacher in the west of Scotland. Now, at that time, I hadn’t heard of William McIlvanney, although I was very familiar with the work of his brother, Hugh, who was a renowned sports journalist with a specialism in football. Some have said he was the greatest football writer of all time. So, when it was suggested that I try William’s book ‘Laidlaw’, I went ahead and did so. It was excellent and one of the best that I had come across at that time. I followed it up with the sequel ‘The Papers of Tony Veitch’ which was just as good. There is a third ‘Strange Loyalties’ which I discovered recently, just after I reread Laidlaw but I haven’t got round to it yet. While McIlvanney started me off in many ways, he was a prolific and well-respected author who wrote many other books. I have tried a few of these but I’m afraid they haven’t caught me the way that the Laidlaw books did. Can I say right away that is no reflection on the author, I think they were just too hard for me!
I’ve seen it said that McIlvanney started the genre of ‘tartan noir’ detective/crime fiction and I suspect that many subsequent Scottish authors would acknowledge that. In fact, I am pretty sure that Ian Rankin has said that the Glasgwegian, Laidlaw, was an inspiration for the Edinburgh-based Rebus. They are very similar characters, former soldiers, articulate and literate, and with a dislike for authority which can result in a rocky road for them to follow in their quest for solutions to crimes which are, generally, murders. I can’t recommend McIlvanney and Rankin highly enough but, because it came first in 1977, I would suggest that you at least read Laidlaw before embarking on the Rankin/Rebus collection.
Just as a final thing here, Ian Rankin managed to get hold of a fourth, unfinished draft of a Laidlaw book by McIlvanney and he has completed it with release due shortly. There will certainly be a review coming soon and I can’t believe it won’t be terrific!
Christopher Brookmyre
As far as other contributors to the ‘tartan noir’ genre are concerned, I really like Christopher Brookmyre although I have felt at times that he is writing for a younger generation of reader than me! Having said that, I particularly like his journalist character, Jack Parlabane, and I try to read all of these. Although not a policeman, Jack is a bit of a private detective and very much in the mould of Rebus and Laidlaw. In addition, a little bit like these two, he almost seems ageless which I think enables him to appeal to a large audience across the generations. There are many books in the Brookmyre collection but I would suggest ‘Quite Ugly One Morning’ is a good place to start. It’s the first one and it is the introduction to Jack Parlabane. As will be the case with most of the authors I have mentioned, I will come back to them in more detail at later times in the blog. At the moment, I simply want to introduce you to who I see are the main players and a few that you might not have come across but who I have certainly enjoyed. There will be posts on a number of Scottish authors, all of which I like for different reasons. I expect you will have heard of some of them but, if there are some you don’t know, I’m really pleased because it would be great if I could introduce you to someone new!