Crime fiction is big, in Scotland. Some say Scottish writers are producing some of the best crime fiction in the world today. Herald Scotland finds out why.
From the piece...
With tales of brutal murders in Georgian town houses, gang wars in grimy estates, serial killers in the north east, and missing persons on misty Hebridean isles, all investigated by a gallery of anti-hero policemen and journalists, crime writing has dominated Scotland’s literary scene since Rankin’s Rebus made his bow in 1987.
And it shows no sign of abating. The Inverness Book Festival, which starts October 5, is selling itself on the glut of Scottish crime writers attending. Writing Scotland, a strand showcasing this country’s work at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto, will be full of Scots crime writers, including Rankin, Denise Mina and Quintin Jardine. Rankin’s new book, The Complaints, introducing his major new character, Malcolm Fox, is selling just as strongly as his Rebus novels, which have racked up sales of more than seven million worldwide.
Mina, alongside Louise Welsh, Helen Fitzgerald, Harry Morris and Karen Campbell, will be taking over Glasgow’s Eastwood Park Theatre tonight to talk about the joys and challenges of the genre. Crime, it seems, certainly pays – at least if you write about it.
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