Crime in the Spotlight 2016 (part one)
Every year Bloody Scotland supports new writers by pairing established authors with ‘support’ acts just starting out on their career - Crime in the Spotlight.
Last year, Jake Kerridge, crime fiction reviewer for The Daily Telegraph discovered current Man Booker long-listed title His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet ‘In the Spotlight’ when he visited Bloody Scotland. Kerridge described the initiative as:
'Such a simple and effective idea that nobody seems to have thought of before. I was able to get a flavour of the work of writers new to me such as Philip Miller, Margot McCuig and the now celebrated Graeme Macrae Burnet. A lot of people I spoke to enjoyed these brief bursts from unfamiliar writers before hearing from the superstars they had travelled to see.’
We thought we'd introduce you to six of the selected Spotlighters. The next six will come tomorrow.
Lesley Kelly - A Fine House in Trinity - Sandstone
Longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize 2016 Lesley Kelly will be reading from her book A Fine House in Trinity. She has worked in the public and voluntary sectors for the past twenty years, dabbling in poetry and stand-up comedy along the way. She has won a number of writing competitions, including the Scotsman’s Short Story award in 2008.
http://lesleykelly7.wixsite.com/author-blog
Stephen Watt - Optograms - Wild Word Press
Born in Dumbarton, Stephen Watt is a Scottish poet and spoken word artist. He is the author of the poetry collection Spit (Bonacia, 2012) and was crowned the Poetry Rivals Slam Champion in Peterborough in 2011. His online video Rubik was awarded the StAnza Digital International Poetry Prize and the Tartan Treasures Award. He has performed widely across the UK, including at Doune The Rabbit Hole, Eden, Wickerman and the Edinburgh Festival.
In 2015, Stephen made his debut in Ireland as part of the unofficial Cuirt Literature Festival fringe show Far From Literature, We Were Reared at the Roisin Dubh in Galway. Optograms was published by Wild Word Press in 2016.
https://twitter.com/stephenwattspit
Sandra Ireland - Beneath the Skin - Polygon/Birlinn
Sandra Ireland was born in Yorkshire, lived for many years in Limerick, and is now based in Carnoustie. She began her writing career as a correspondent on a local newspaper but quickly realised that fiction is much more intriguing than fact. In 2013 Sandra was awarded a Carnegie- Cameron scholarship to study for an MLitt in Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee, graduating with a distinction in 2014. Her work has appeared in various publications and women’s magazines. She is currently writing her second novel, another psychological thriller.
https://twitter.com/22_ireland
Daniel Pembrey - The Harbour Master - No Exit Press
DANIEL PEMBREY grew up in Nottinghamshire beside Sherwood Forest. He studied history at Edinburgh University and received an MBA from INSEAD business school. Daniel then spent over a decade working in America and more recently Luxembourg, coming to rest in Amsterdam and London — dividing his time now between these two great maritime cities. He is the author of the Henk van der Pol detective series and several short thriller stories, and he occasionally contributes non-fiction articles to publications including The Financial Times and The Times.
Shelley Day - The Confession of Stella Moon - Saraband
Shelley has been a litigation lawyer, a psychology lecturer and a research professor. These days she mainly writes fiction. Her debut The Confession of Stella Moon won the Andrea Badenoch Award, was long-listed for the Bath Novel Award, and shortlisted for the Charles Pick Fellowship and the Dundee International Book Prize.
Her short stories have also won prizes and have appeared in magazines, newspapers, anthologies and online. She has read at the Hexham Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and on the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2013 she was named as one of Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature’s emerging writers. In 2015 she won a Northern Writers’ Award.
Michael Grothaus - Epiphany Jones - Orenda
Novelist and journalist Michael Grothaus was born in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1977. He spent his twenties in Chicago where he earned his degree in filmmaking from Columbia and got his start in journalism writing for Screen. After working for institutions including The Art Institute of Chicago, Twentieth Century Fox, and Apple he moved to the United Kingdom where he earned his postgraduate degree in creative writing. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Litro Magazine, Fast Company, VICE, The Irish Times,Screen, Quartz, and others. His debut novel is EPIPHANY JONES, a story about sex trafficking among the Hollywood elite, based on his experiences at the Cannes Film Festival. It is out now from Orenda Books. Michael is represented worldwide by The Hanbury Agency in London, where he lives when not traveling. His writing is read by millions of people each month.
http://www.michaelgrothaus.com/
For full details on the Crime in the Spotlight and Pitch Perfect initiatives you can view our press release.
(Not) Born in the USA
Two Scotsmen and an Northern Irishman walk into a bar and a certain Bruce Springsteen song is playing on the juke box. The first Scotsman looks a bit Cross so to calm his nerves, he orders a beer and waits, tapping his fingers in time to the music. The Irishman goes up to bar, turns up the music and shouts “order at the bar” to the barman, then orders a Guinness. The second Scotsman enters and nods to his two friends. He puts the music on full blast and then waits for either of them to buy him a drink as, well, he’s one of the founders of Bloody Scotland after all. Then a Scotswoman who now lives in America comes in, turns off the music and tells them all to behave. This woman is in charge in here and it’s time for some serious talking...
They’re all here for the Bloody Scotland panel (Not) Born in the USA - a group of Scottish and Irish writers who set their books in the USA. Do they know their APB from their BOLO? Well, you’ll need an all points bulletin for every one of their novels, they’re that gritty - and Be On the Look Out for their panel at Bloody Scotland else Catriona may just come after you...
Mason Cross (on Booktrail)
Mason Cross - Scottish by accent and all American by his character Carter Blake. This man is the all American boy as he’s been all over the good old USA, either chasing someone or on the run from someone else. He’s a skilled man hunter and so when the LAPD need help, or the Chicago Sniper is at large, who’s the best man for the job?
Mason writes the ultimate thrillers - a manhunter chasing criminals through cities, deserts and every other landscape you can think of. Conspiracy abound along the highways, byways and backwaters of the USA and provides the ultimate hunting ground.
In his latest novel A Time to Kill, Carter thinks he’s left Winterlong behind, the top secret government agency he used to work for, but as we all know he might leave the world of covert operations and secret deals but that it never truly leaves him.
Steve Cavanagh (on Booktrail)
Steve Cavanagh knows all about APBs and BOLOs as his character Eddie is a lawyer who has to know both as he tracks criminals and other undesirables around the streets of New York. Being the city that never sleeps, he too must sleep with one eye open. This is Eddie’s city - as the streets, the taverns and the courthouses of the city are marked with precision on his criminal map of the city. This is the New York where deals are done in dodgy taverns, where those who reside in glass tower blocks close to Central park really shouldn’t thrown stones.
New York - a city whose streets are mapped out in criss cross intersections for targeted viewing like the sniper of a gun. In the firing line here is precise writing, a targeted plot and a heart-stopping visit to a city we all think we know well. But turn it over and its underbelly is dark and cold...
G. J. Brown (on Booktrail)
G. J. Brown is one of the co-founders of the Bloody Scotland festival. Also known as Gordon Brown but with pen name G. J. Brown, writing political thrillers set in Washington DC, probably just as well. For this man turns the world of American politics upside down, on its head and inside out.
Craig McIntyre might have a Scottish name but this man has worked in Iraq and is now in the middle of a different kind of war right in the heart of the US government. Scandal, hit-men and political dark dealings - these novels could only be set in Washington DC. The city is built on political foundations - the Senate and the White House all feature in the novels and Craig is the link between the high world and the under world.
Craig is a former US military man but he has a great many state secrets he could easily explode. Book three might well be called #Craiggate
Catriona McPherson (on Booktrail)
Three landscapes, three thrilling characters. Someone is needed to keep them all in check. Enter Catriona McPherson who sets her novels all over Scotland and particularly gets gallus about Galloway.
Three men who hail from Scottish and Irish shores who set their novels in America and a woman living in America who sets her books back home in Scotland.
Now let’s turn up that juke box...
Born down in a dead man’s town
The first book to choose from Cross, Cavanagh or Brown
End up as a reader that can’t read enough
So you spend time at Bloody Scotland trying to catch up
Make sure you send out an APB for these fantastic writers and BOLO for their panel at Bloody Scotland!
Get your tickets to (Not) Born in the USA: September 11th, 1:30pm
This is the sixth post of the Booktrail blog takeover for a series of posts exploring where setting shapes a number of novels from authors attending Bloody Scotland this year.
Visit the booktrail for maps, travel guides and reviews for the books featuring in Bloody Scotland.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebooktrailer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebooktrail
McIlvanney Prize finalists
We're excited to reveal the four finalists of the McIlvanney Prize 2016.
Black Widow - Chris Brookmyre
The Jump - Doug Johnstone
Val McDermid - Splinter the Silence
E. S. Thomson - Beloved Poison
Judges Lee Randall, Stewart Bain & Magnus Linklater said of the finalists:
Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre - this novel is like watching Olympic diving – just when you think the plot can’t twist again, it takes a new turn. Even the twists have twists. With a theme of cyber-abuse, this shows an author taking a long running series to new heights.
Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid - set in a totally believable world of internet trolling, this novel features established characters but moves their relationship into a new place, suffused with longing. Easily accessible, even to those readers who have not been introduced to earlier books in the series.
The Jump by Doug Johnstone – a taut psychological thriller with a powerful and absorbing narrative which makes this work a compelling read. The reader is drawn into a family drama, suicide, murder -- and a plot whose outcome remains nail-bitingly unresolved until the final pages.
Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson - an ambitious and original novel, full of vivid historical detail about Victorian medicine, and a richly gothic atmosphere, with a large cast of wonderfully named characters, including the strong lead character.
The winner of the Scottish Crime Book of the Year will be awarded The McIlvanney Prize in memory of William McIlvanney at the opening ceremony of Bloody Scotland. His brother, Hugh McIlvanney OBE, will present the award on Friday 9th September to the winner and all four finalists will be presented with a full set of Laidlaw novels.
For full info on the longlist go here.
There is also more information available in the press release.
Writing Orkney
The latest blog from The Booktrail:
Mention Orkney and what do you think of?
Mysterious islands with an ethereal quality to them? A mist swirling around the bare trees and desolate landscape? Islands cut off from the rest of the world where the weather dictates your daily routine? A place where you are among some of the most diverse and fascinating landscapes in the world?
It’s also a good place for a crime scene or two - no one is going to hear you scream after all. There are more than one or two rocky outcrops where you can hide a body and with only animals as witnesses... crime fiction novelists can really let go.
Three writers who have brought their own brand of death and destruction to these windy isles therefore are the best guides to the landscape and people.
Lin Anderson - None But the Dead (on Booktrail)
Our first visit to Orkney is remote even by Orkney standards. Sanday, one of Britain’s northernmost islands, is not the most hospitable of places nor one of the easiest to get to... and the weather is hardly welcoming either.
The ferry only runs if the wind and rain allow. The planes are also dependent on the weather conditions so that means any communication and of course police work is too.
A craggy, inhospitable landscape is therefore the ideal blank canvas for Rhoda Macleod to explore. Imagine being stranded here with people you don’t know or indeed a crime writer with a dastardly glint in their eye?
“After all, uncovering old bones on Sanday was almost as frequent an occurrence as high winds and rain.”
Gale force winds, the souls of dead children and a remote, claustrophobic place with no modern forensics, no quick and efficient soil sample analysis...
Lin Andersen’s palette is dark and brooding, lines blur and the picture is grim and chilling. It would be a booktrail like no other to go to Sanday with Rhoda Macleod.
Doug Johnstone - Crash Land (on Booktrail)
Orkney’s history and mythical past are the main colours on Doug Johnstone’s canvas. He not so much paints than carves the landscape into his story.
He sets his story in Kirkwall and although he changes some of the village geographically, it’s undeniable the brutal unforgiving landscape that Doug just carves up with a very sharp knife.
As for the historical angle. The Tomb of Eagles mentioned in the novel is as mythical and as fascinating as it sounds. This is a real tomb which over the years has released more than its fair share of ancient bones and artefacts. The ideal tool for a crime writer really and a veritable cave of story ideas.
I laughed when Doug admits in the novel that he’s invented a bar inside Kirkwall airport. If the island doesn’t offer the crime writer exactly what he needs he can always invent it!
Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest (on Booktrail)
Now the third writer in the Orkney panel is the lovely Louise Welsh and her version of Orkney is beyond that which you will have ever encountered.
I know because I’ve spent time in her dystopian London and smelling the sulphur tinge in the air as I exited the Tube...for the smell of sulphur was the start of a horrific spread of disease and death in the first Plague novel....
Now, this fear has potentially spread all the way to Orkney. And if “the sweats” reach here there is no way out.
“Orkney was flat and almost treeless. You could see for miles, here roads took dark twists and turns, the high verges and hedgerows deadened sound and it was impossible to know what might lie around the next corner.”
So, if you really want a good look at Orkney and see why this stunning archipelago has enchanted so many writers and created so many myths, travel with any of these three writers and see the landscape through their eyes. It’s a great, if not chilling, view.
You won’t want to miss this visit to Orkney!
Get your tickets to Writing Orkney: September 11th, 1:30pm
This is the fifth post of the Booktrail blog takeover for a series of posts exploring where setting shapes a number of novels from authors attending Bloody Scotland this year.
Visit the booktrail for maps, travel guides and reviews for the books featuring in Bloody Scotland.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebooktrailer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebooktrail
Graeme Macrae Burnet's favourite Euro-noir novels
I’ve often been asked why I chose to set my first novel The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau in the nondescript French town of Saint-Louis. The answer is quite simple: the setting itself was the idea for the novel; the story and characters came later. On a chance visit to Saint-Louis a number of years ago, I was captivated by the sense of unchanging routine and claustrophobia I observed (or perhaps projected) there. As a reader I like to feel transported to the locale of whatever I’m reading and the best writers and crime novels do just this. Here are four favourites:
The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
Simenon has a peerless ability to conjure a strong sense of place from the sparsest sentences and a few astute observations. His novels are set as far afield as his native Belgium, the US and Africa, but, to my mind he is at his very best casting his eye over the interactions of small-town cafés and bars and the characters who inhabit them. It’s hard to select a single novel from the around 200 Simenon wrote, but The Blue Room has recently been reissued and is a fine demonstration of the author’s craftsmanship.
The novel opens with Tony Falcone and his mistress, Andrée, ‘light-headed, their bodies still tingling’, on a post-coital high following their monthly tryst at the Hôtel des Voyageurs in the village of Saint-Justin, but it is the description of the sights and sounds from the terrace below – ‘the stew simmering in the kitchen, mingled with the faintly musty smell of the fibre mattress’ – that truly brings the scene to life. As with all Simenon, the action unfolds from this opening scene with a doleful sense of inevitability, but it is his evocation of the setting which really lingers in the mind.
The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Reading Robbe-Grillet is a bit like looking under the bonnet of a car: only really necessary if you want to be a mechanic. What is The Erasers like? Imagine someone dropped a Maigret novel from a tenth-floor window then shovelled the shattered pieces into a book. The novel ostensibly concerns the murder of a professor in an unnamed French town. A detective investigates. But there any resemblance with a conventional crime novel ends. You don’t know who is who; in what order events have taken place; or even if the events described have really happened. It’s disorientating, but it makes you question the nature of the way we tell stories and how we understand them. It's a bit like that time you agreed to eat a handful of raw chillies for a dare: it wasn't a lot of fun, but you're strangely glad you did it.
Double-Barrel by Nicolas Freeling
For readers of a certain age, Nicolas Freeling’s name will be forever associated with the Van der Valk theme of the 1970s TV series, but as a writer he is now largely and unjustly forgotten. It’s a pity because his Amsterdam-based detective is every bit the equal of Simenon’s Maigret when it comes to unorthodox methods. Freeling was English but lived a cosmopolitan life, and his novels feel very European. In Double-Barrel, Van der Valk is seconded to the dreary northern Dutch town of Zwinderen, where a series of poison pen letters have been sent. Van der Valk duly investigates, but Freeling’s real purpose is to reveal the hypocrisy lurking beneath the Calvinist small-town mindset. Van der Valk ends up playing Peeping Tom himself, implicating himself, and we the readers, in the voyeurism of the town’s population:
Watching a person through binoculars – even if that person is simply cleaning his teeth under the kitchen tap – creates a strong emotion. You are ashamed and excited... With binoculars you are the submarine commander, the assassin, the preacher in the pulpit. God. As well as, always, the pornographer. A strong hot emotion.
Brilliant stuff!
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment is the great grand-daddy of crime novels. It’s a big beast, baggy and capacious, but at its heart is the relationship between the murderer Raskolnikov and the wily detective Porfiry, who rather than confronting his quarry allows his guilt to compel him to confess. It’s exactly the way that you would expect Maigret or Van der Valk to operate. What is perhaps less commonly commented upon is the fantastic vibrancy of Dostoyevsky’s Saint Petersburg. From the very opening pages we are immersed in a city strewn with the depraved, destitute and insane; a city of stifling heat, crammed alleyways, riven with the ‘unendurable stench of the pubs’. It’s like wandering through a Hieronymus Bosch canvas with a madman as your guide.
Graeme Macrae Burnet's second novel His Bloody Project is longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. He will be at Bloody Scotland for the Writing in Exile event on September 11th at 1:30pm.
Get your tickets to see Graeme now.
Writing in Exile
The latest blog from The Booktrail:
Out of all the Bloody Scotland panels taking place this year, the title of this panel really excited me. It isn't about writers banished from their homelands, in some literary sort of prison, but writers who have chosen to set books in foreign lands.
Well, I do like a bit of this on the booktrail and so I couldn’t resist taking a closer look at the places mentioned. Hamburg, Iceland and France. A trio of travelling temptation.
Step aboard the plane and off we go...
Horror in Hamburg (on Booktrail)
Hamburg - Craig Russell is the creator of the Jan Fabel novels set in Hamburg. Both himself and his character are very interesting people. Craig, for example, speaks both German and English and has a strong interest in post-war German history. He won the Scottish Crime Novel of the Year at 2015’s Bloody Scotland so the man has form. Good form.
Jan Fabel is also hardcore - he’s an Erster Kriminalhauptkommissar (Principal Chief Commissar), and is head of the Mordkommission (Murder Squad) of the Hamburg Police. He’s a rare and exciting mix of cultures: half-Scottish, half-German and like his creator, is very keen on history. He was even a historian before becoming a policeman.
It’s the Hamburg twist with the German historical background that roots Jan Fabel in a very evocative and revealing time and place.
Intrigue in Iceland (on Booktrail)
You don’t want to cross Michael Ridpath - he is known for his Fire and Ice series. Both will burn you in different ways. Iceland-born, Boston-raised homicide detective Magnus Jonson is the perfect mix of cultures.
The landscape and culture of Iceland is evoked in many intricate ways. In ‘Where the Shadows Lie’ you’re introduced to the famous Sagas and the magic of Tolkein’s legacy. In ‘66 Degrees North’ there’s the chill of the Iceland financial crisis to tackle. Book three ‘Meltwater’ clouds you in the mystery and the smut of the erupting volcano Eyjafjallajökull. ‘Sea of Stone’ transports you back to the volcano and to a small farm outside of Bjarnarhöfn. This is the small town with a Shark Museum in real life! Now that is quite a tour of one country in only four novels. I can’t imagine where he’ll take us for book five.
The French Kiss of Death (on Booktrail)
2016 Man Booker longlister Greame Macrae Burnet’s first book The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau is set in a small French town on the French - Swiss border. Saint Louis in Alsace is described as ‘non descript’ and more of a transit town in the novel.
Manfred Baumann lives there and is a bit of a loner. He is awkward in almost all social occasions and so spends much of his time on his own watching a waitress, Adèle Bedeau, at the local bar. When she goes missing, Manfred’s life also changes. A missing person in a small town causes unwanted attention to come calling.
Rural France is evoked with style here - the timelessness of Saint Louis contrasts with the unfolding drama. A man living there on both the edge of society and the edge of rural France, ensures that the location mirrors the drama and reflects the sense of an outsider looking in.
So going into Exile means Horror in Hamburg, Intrigue in Iceland and a French Kiss of death in France. All forensically examined in the Scottish city of Stirling.
Away the noo...
Get your tickets to Writing in Exile: September 11th, 1:30pm
This is the fourth post of the Booktrail blog takeover for a series of posts exploring where setting shapes a number of novels from authors attending Bloody Scotland this year.
Visit the booktrail for maps, travel guides and reviews for the books featuring in Bloody Scotland.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebooktrailer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebooktrail
Doug Johnstone's top 5 crime writers
McIlvanney Prize longlister Doug Johnstone told us his top 5 crime writers.
1. Megan Abbott
I think Abbott is just the best writer around at the moment. She writes dark, tense, atmospheric novels about the secrets and lies that hide in American suburbia. These are brilliant psychological thrillers, often revolving around teenage girls as they struggle to understand their place and power in the world.
2. James Sallis
Sallis’s Turner trilogy is the finest crime trilogy of all time, wonderfully laidback smalltown Americana with a dark underbelly. He’s also written amazing detective novels and some of the finest standalones around, including Drive, which got made into the movie with Ryan Gosling in the lead role. His latest, Willnot, is as good as anything he’s written.
3. Sara Gran
Gran writes really oddball crime novels, from the historical junkie book Dope to the psychological horror of Come Closer. Her Claire De Witt series is an existential detective masterclass, with the strongest female central character. She’s been writing for television recently, but I hope she gets back to books soon.
4. James M. Cain
I think Double Indemnity is my favourite ever novel. Such amazing dialogue, plot, character, setting, attitude, all crammed into a hundred pages! Just a grade A, classy writer. The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce are up there with the best ever novels too.
5. Don Winslow
Winslow’s The Power of the Dog and The Cartel are extraordinary examinations of the Mexican drug cartels, brutal and unforgiving in their bleakness. But he also writes poetically about crime and its repercussions, like in the wonderful Savages and The Kings of Cool.
Doug Johnstone will be appearing at Bloody Scotland in Writing Orkney on Sunday 11th Sept, 1:30pm and at our Scotland vs England football match.
Chris Brookmyre: Top Five Scots Whose Dark Secrets Will Inspire Future Crime Novels
Chris Brookmyre believes he has sussed the five Scots whose dark secrets will shape the future crime bestsellers.
Lorraine Kelly
Nobody is telling me that woman doesn't have a head in her fridge and a blood- spattered altar where she makes horrific sacrifices to a grotesque effigy of Paul Sturrock.
Nicola Sturgeon
Only bloodlines riven with true evil emerge from Dreghorn. She pursued a path to high office to ensure she had the power to suppress the truth about Ayrshire's hellmouth.
Ian Rankin
All that vinyl he buys is actually for melting down and coating his victims, House of Wax style.
Val McDermid
Workmen have to sign an NDA before they're allowed into her basement. It's a redundant measure as none of them ever recovers the power of speech.
Judith Ralston
The Scottish weather is HER FAULT. She has the power to control it but prefers to watch us suffer.
Chris will be at Bloody Scotland 2016 at the following events:
Mark Billingham and Chris Brookmyre, Friday 9th September, 8:30pm
Crime Writers Football Match: Scotland v England, Saturday 10th September, 2pm
Chris Brookmyre and Stuart Neville, Saturday 10th September, 5:30pm
How tartan is the new noir?
Think of things associated with Scotland and of course tartan is near the top of the list. But now there’s a new pattern being woven into the landscape. One that you don’t wear as a kilt or a shawl but a proud badge of honour on your bookshelves. Tartan Noir is of course something that anyone who loves Scottish crime writers and crime fiction set in Scotland will already know about. But did you know just how intricate the pattern of this tartan actually is?
If Tartan Noir were a picnic rug, it would be rich, intricately woven with dark threads running through it that you can’t always see immediately. It might look lovely but get closer and it’s coarse and unforgiving, with ragged edges that draw you in. Spend a time on the rug and before you know it, it’s wrapped itself around you, nice and tight. That’s it. Tartan Noir has got you in its grasp.
Enjoy your picnic…
Something quirky and tasty?
Matt Bendoris - Glasgow (on Booktrails)
If you like your quirky cities, then Matt Bendoris’ Glasgow is THE place to go. Matt knows the city like the back of his hand in his role of an award winning Scottish Sun journalist. Latest novel Wicked Leaks, inspired by WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden revelations is the sequel to DM for Murder, a twitter inspired murder fest. He even wrote it on his Blackberry for goodness sake. Art imitating life etc. Genius really. It’s the Scottish wit which also packs a side splitting punch.
Glasgow grit in your sandwiches?
Bill Daly - Glasgow (on Booktrails)
Bill Daly’s Character Charlie Anderson is Glasgow Personified. He’s gritty, hard core and takes no nonsense. I would have said prisoners but then that’s his job as DCI. From his patch centered around Pitt Street station, he knows his city and you feel every footstep as he pounds the streets looking for the bad guys. Glasgow is his stomping ground but he does get a bit further afield when an investigation takes him across to Port Glasgow.
But whilst you can take the guy out of Glasgow, you can’t take Glasgow out of the guy. Not that I’d want to, role on book four!
A taste for heights?
Neil Broadfoot - Edinburgh (on Booktrails)
The Scott Monument in the middle of the city is famous for being a top tourist attraction and literary heritage marker. It’s the largest monument to a writer in the world and commemorates Sir Walter Scott.
However, if you go with Neil Broadfoot, it takes on a much more sinister appearance in Falling Fast. The city is awash with politicians and tourists - two of the very aspects Edinburgh is known for. Edinburgh’s position as capital city where national newspapers are based is brought into key relief as a city of bustling excitement so by the time they get to Skye in The Storm, Neil’s taken us on quite a journey.
A wee dram to finish?
Aline Templeton - Dumfries and Galloway (on Booktrails)
This is the woman who has not only Dumfries and Galloway on the literary map but her unique version of it. The village of Kirckluce is fictional but there is a Glenluce and plenty other villages in and around the area which have more than a starring role. And it’s the essence of the place which is infused onto each and every page.
Aline writes about small town Scotland - local development in Lamb to the Slaughter and Scottish folklore in the Third Sin. It’s this picture of a rich and varied landscape and cultural landscape that she paints so well.
So you see, Tartan Noir is a rich and varied tapestry with something for everyone. Four iconic writers in this panel alone but imagine what you find when you start digging into their back catalogue? Probably a body or two knowing this lot. Well it is Tartan Noir at Bloody Scotland after all!
Get your tickets to How Tartan Is Your Noir?: September 11th, 10am
This is the second post of the Booktrail blog takeover for a series of posts exploring where setting shapes a number of novels from authors attending Bloody Scotland this year.
Visit the booktrail for maps, travel guides and reviews for the books featuring in Bloody Scotland.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebooktrailer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebooktrail
Russel D McLean: Top 5 pulp novelists you (probably) haven’t read...but should
In our series of '5' themed blogs celebrating Bloody Scotland's fifth year, Russel D McLean reveals his top 5 pulp novelists that you probably haven't read but should.
5 – Robert Bloch
Appearing at number 5 because chances are you’ll know his name, and you might even have read his classic, Psycho (far darker than the movie) – and until recently that was all I knew, too. But a 2008 re-release by Hard Case Crime of two of his novels back to back (Shooting Star and Spider Web) showed that Bloch was a master of the pulp novel, with a mean line in prose and an eye for the seedier side of life.
4 – Ernest Tidyman
Even if you don’t know Tidyman, you’ll know his most famous creation, the black private dick, who was a sex machine to all the chicks: John Shaft. As well as writing the screen adaptation of Shaft and its first sequel, Shaft’s Big Score, Tidyman also wrote the script for The French Connection, and one of Chuck Norris’s earliest films, A Force of One. He only wrote seven novels, but when one of them’s Shaft, you have to tip your pulp hat to the man.
3 – Elleston Trevor
A prolific British pulp novelist, screenwriter, playwright (and quite possibly insomniac), Trevor wrote under several pseudonyms, including Simon Rattray, Caesar Smith and Lesley Smith, but was best known for his spy thrillers written under the name Adam Hall. I’ve only read one of Trevor’s books so far – The Runaway Man (1958) – which, as the back cover promised, had a “strange end” in which the protagonist lies “prone and chilled on the rotting hulk of a barge”, and I’m definitely on the lookout for more!
2 – Wade Miller
Branded Woman by Wade Miller (1952) has one of my favourite femme fatales in the enticing smuggler Cat Morgan, seeking revenge on the man who branded her. Miller is the pen name for Robert Wade and Bill Miller, who wrote a number of novels together, including Badge of Evil, which eventually became better known in movie form as Touch of Evil (1956).
1 – Richard S Prather
Prather was the author who started me collecting pulp novels many years ago, when I first stumbled across the beautiful Gold Medal edition of Always Leave ‘Em Dying. “Gals, guns, guys go round and around as SHELL SCOTT spins the wheel!” yelled the strapline, and right there I was hooked. Although Prather did some brilliant standalone novels (1952’s The Peddler comes to mind), it was Shell Scott with his white-blonde hair, steely gaze and snappy one liners who really captured the reader’s imaginations.
Russel D McLean will be appearing at Bloody Scotland this year in Scotland the Grave on Saturday 10th September at 12:15pm.
And When I Die is out on Kindle now and in paperback on September 8th.