Pictured above is our small shelf of Scottish crime books. Louise Welsh’s novel “The Cutting Room” is not included as our copy was out to a reader at the Library.
The story of Scottish crime fiction in 11 books from its dark origins to the present day when Scottish crime fiction is read all around the world.
Scotland exports salmon and whisky to the world, but its biggest cultural export is arguably Scottish crime fiction, widely known as Tartan Noir. Scottish crime fiction is huge in France, big in Germany and popular almost everywhere in the world. Ian Rankin’s books for example have been translated into at least thirty six languages and are international bestsellers.
We have attempted to tell the story of Scottish crime fiction in eleven books. We tried to do it in ten but could not get lower than eleven. This list tries but inevitably fails to capture the breadth and richness of Scottish crime fiction, especially contemporary Scottish crime fiction. We could easily have listed twenty, fifty or one hundred books.
Tartan Noir comes from a place deep within the Scottish psyche. Scotland has an often brutal and bloody history which is captured in earlier literary forms such as the Border Ballads. Edinburgh with its dark, narrow closes (the alleys that lead at right angles off the city’s High Street) and the beautiful if sometimes bleak and sparsely populated Highlands and Islands provide perfect settings for crime fiction. Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city and so a natural setting for gritty urban crime novels. Famous Glasgow murders such as the Madeline Smith case in 1857 and Bible John in 1968-69 have inspired many a Tartan Noir novel. In addition Scottish crime novels have been set in almost every part of Scotland from Selkirk to Shetland.
Robert Louis Stevenson. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 1886.
Stevenson’s tale of duality although set in London has a direct connection to the dark side of the Scottish soul and was an influence on Ian Rankin‘s early Rebus novels. As was James Hogg’s “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner” (1824). Rankin has written an adaption of Hogg’s novel for cinema but it has not so far been produced.
Arthur Conan Doyle. A Study in Scarlet. 1887.
Edinburgh born Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story in which Holmes meets Watson. We could not compile a list of Scottish crime fiction without mentioning that the world’s greatest and most famous fictional detective was created by a Scot, although the stories are not set in Scotland. Doyle served as clerk to the surgeon and lecturer Joseph Bell at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Bell inspired Holmes’ deductive methods.
Josephine Tey. The Singing Sands. 1952.
Tey is regarded as the crime writer’s crime writer, her novel “The Daughter of Time” has been voted the best crime novel of all time by other crime writers. All of her novels are classics and this her last book is set partly in her native Scotland.
William McIlvanney. Laidlaw. 1977.
Jack Laidlaw investigates a brutal murder on Glasgow Green. McIlvanney’s first crime novel is arguably the most influential and important modern Scottish crime novel. Tartan Noir starts with this book.
Ian Rankin. Knots and Crosses. 1987.
The first Rebus novel updates Jekyll and Hyde to modern day Edinburgh. Ten years later in 1997 the success of the eighth Rebus novel “Black and Blue” would make Tartan Noir known throughout the world.
Denise Mina. Garnethill. 1998.
Mina’s hero Maureen O’Donnell is a survivor of abuse and mental illness and one of the most compelling and original detectives in all of Tartan Noir. Mina’s debut set in Glasgow brings a fresh feminist perspective to the crime novel.
Louise Welsh. The Cutting Room. 2002.
A stunning and award-winning debut novel, set in a dark and fully realised Glasgow and featuring a large cast of misfits and oddballs. This is a very 21st century Scottish crime novel that also looks back to Scottish crime fictions origins in the gothic.
Alexander McCall Smith. The Sunday Philosophy Club. 2004
McCall Smith is the creator of the hugely popular “The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency”. This is the first of a series of novels set in his hometown of Edinburgh and featuring Isabel Dalhousie, academic philosopher and amateur detective. This is the Edinburgh of Jean Brodie, of ladies who lunch, attend concerts and visit art galleries. If the darkness at the heart of most Scottish crime fiction is getting too much for you McCall Smith’s gentler crimes novels are the perfect anecdote.
Val McDermid. The Skeleton Road. 2014.
A cold case investigation in Edinburgh sets Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie on a journey that takes in Oxford, The Hague and Croatia. If Scottish crime has a Queen it is Fife born Val McDermid. She has sold more than 19 million books and been translated into 30 languages.
Graeme MacRae Burnet. His Bloody Project. 2015.
This tells the tale of a 17-year-old boy named Roderick ‘Roddy’ Macrae, who committed a triple homicide circa 1869. This is a historic novel, a crime novel and an acclaimed literary novel which was short listed for the Booker Prize. It explores the dark side of the Scottish psyche in a similar way to Hogg and Stevenson and is one of the most acclaimed Scottish novels of recent years.
Ambrose Parry. The Way of All Flesh. 2018.
Wife and husband Dr Marisa Haetzman and Chris Brookmyre write crime novels set in 19th century Edinburgh under the name Ambrose Parry. Brookmyre is an established crime writer. Dr Haetzman is a former consultant anaesthetist with an interest in the history of medicine who saw the germ of a novel while researching the work of James Young Simpson (1811-1870), a pioneer of the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic. They pooled their talents to write an ongoing series of novels that return the Scottish crime novel to Edinburgh’s dark closes.
The above is only a tiny selection from the many Scottish crime novels that have been published. Scottish crime fiction has its own large section in our local bookshop and even its own book festival “Bloody Scotland” ,which this year will be held in Stirling from the 12th-14th September. We hope our little library inspires you to further explore Scottish crime fiction.