Bullet Points: Totally Jam-Packed Edition

• Coming off his recent success with the Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit, filmmaker Scott Frank is said to now be “working on the development of a Sam Spade TV series that he is hoping [English actor] Clive Owen will star in. And his pitch for the series, which follows the adventures of the protagonist from The Maltese Falcon, sounds like it could be pretty incredible,” remarks The Playlist. “‘What if you do Sam Spade later in life, when he’s 60 years old?’ explained Frank. ‘He’s now an ex-pat living in the South of France … And his past finds him in this small town. We’re doing six episodes. Clive Owen is going to play Sam Spade.’” The idea reminds me of the concept behind Lawrence Osborne’s Only to Sleep, a remarkably satisfying 2018 Philip Marlowe novel that imagined Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles private eye as a 72-year-old man, living in retirement in Baja California and being hired to investigate the suspicious swimming death of a debt-ridden con man/developer. Owen, as you might recall, was talked of years ago as the perfect person to play Marlowe in a feature-length film based on one of Chandler’s famous yarns. Are we any more likely to see him star in a Sam Spade TV drama than we were to witness his performance in a Marlowe flick? Time will tell. (Hat tip to Frederick Zackel.)

• The Gumshoe Site brings this exciting news: “Canogate Books asked [Scottish author] Ian Rankin to complete William McIlvanney’s handwritten manuscript of [a] final Inspector Jack Laidlaw novel. McIlvanney, often called ‘The Godfather of Tartan Noir,’ was the author of three novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw of Glasgow CID, and died in December 2015 at the age of 79. His living partner, Siobhan Lynch, found an unfinished novel, The Dark Remains, the story of Laidlaw’s first case, and took the manuscript to Canongate Books, which had republished McIlvanney’s books in 2013. As McIlvanney was a literary hero of Rankin, Rankin … accepted the offer [to complete that novel]. The Dark Remains will be published by Canongate in September 2021.” In its own report on this posthumous literary partnership, The Guardian quotes Rankin as saying that McIlvanney left behind only “notes towards a book, a few scenes, some central characters, a sense of what the story might actually be about, but fairly incomplete. … Willie doesn’t quite lay out who the killer is, so I had to get inside his head to see what he was actually saying,’ he said. ‘It seemed like he had two or three stories that he was juggling … It was an act of archaeology, and an act of detection.’” Regardless, you can count on me to purchase a copy of the finished product!

• This item comes from In Reference to Murder:

Sisters in Crime announced the creation of the new SinC Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. The SinC Pride Award will be a $2,000 annual award to support an emerging writer of the LGBTQIA+ crime-fiction writing community with both financial and practical career guidance and support. Similar to the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award, the recipient of the SinC Pride Award may use funds for activities including workshops, seminars, conferences, retreats, online courses, and research activities required for completion of the work. An unpublished writer is preferred, however, publication of not more than 10 pieces of short fiction and/or up to two self-published or traditionally published books will not disqualify an applicant. John Copenhaver, Cheryl Head, and Kristen Lepionka will serve as judges for the inaugural award. Applications will open on January 15 and run through March 15, with the winner announced in early April. For more information, contact grants@sistersincrime.org.

• I never knew that H.G. Wells wrote a mermaid novel.

• CrimeReads is out with its “choices for 2020’s best crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers.” Several of its 10 top titles were predictable, but there are a few surprises. Liz Nugent’s Little Cruelties (Scout), for one. Elizabeth Hand’s The Book of Lamps and Banners (Mulholland), for another. And Alexandra Burt’s Shadow Garden (Berkley).

• Tom Nolan’s 10-best list for The Wall Street Journal contains another handful of eye-openers. He turns thumbs-up on not only Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris (Soho Crime) and Tom Bouman’s The Bramble and the Rose (Norton), but also Anne Perry’s One Fatal Flaw (Ballantine) and Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders (Morrow).

• Despite all of my recent attention to “best crime fiction of the year” lists, I missed spotting BookPage’s post about its own 10 mystery and suspense choices. Among that monthly review’s picks are Sophie Hannah’s Perfect Little Children (Morrow), Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water (Sourcebooks Landmark), Sara Sliger’s Take Me Apart (MCD), and Heather Young’s The Distant Dead (Morrow).

• Earlier this week I provided a link to New York Times columnist Marilyn Stasio’s inventory of her favorite crime novels of 2020, but I failed to note the publication of Times writer-at-large Sarah Lyall’s list of what she claims are “The Best Thrillers of 2020.” Her nominees stretch from Tana French’s The Searcher (Viking) and Gilly Macmillan’s To Tell You the Truth (Morrow) to Debra Jo Immergut’s “startling” You Again (Ecco). The question, however, is do these books really qualify as “thrillers”?

• Meanwhile, George Easter at Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has collected his own review staff’s reading favorites from the last dozen months. There are eight contributors represented in his compilation—too many titles for me to mention. But offered below are editor Easter’s 12 “best novel” selections:

— The Last Flight, by Julie Clark (Sourcebooks Landmark)
— Victim 2117, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton)
— The Finisher, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)
— The Last Hunt, by Deon Meyer (Atlantic Monthly Press)
— Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)
— Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
— The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
— House Privilege, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press)
— Blind Vigil, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)
— The Boy in the Woods, by Harlan Coben (Grand Central)
— Moonflower Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
— The Curator, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

• By the way, not long ago Deadly Pleasures launched a brand-new Web site to coincide with its transformation from a print publication to a full-color quarterly digital periodical. Easter says his “goal is to post something new [there] every day or two.” Online contents will include book reviews and newsy bits about crime-fiction commendations, as well as vintage reprints from the magazine’s past (such as Ted Fitzgerald’s 1997 interview with author Stephen Marlowe). The editor has also begun a series called “George’s Mystery Library Videos,” episodes of which are fairly short (lasting 15 or fewer minutes) and have thus far found him talking on camera about “signed material with the same cover art,” James Grady’s “Condor” novels and short fiction, and what makes a “true” first edition. I look forward to seeing how the Deadly Pleasures site evolves in the near future.

• Deadline brings word that “Netflix has greenlit a five-part Swedish-language series on Stig Engström, the man who was named as the probable murderer [in 1986] of former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. The Unlikely Murderer is made by Swedish producer FLX—which is behind Netflix series Quicksand and Love & Anarchy—and stars Robert Gustafsson as Engström. The part-fictionalized story is based on a 2018 book [The Unbelievable Truth] by Thomas Pettersson. Following the assassination of Palme in 1986, Engström managed to elude justice right up to his death through a combination of audacity, luck, and a perplexed police force.”

• Jane Harper’s The Dry was one of my favorite crime novels of 2017, so I’m pleased to learn that a big-screen adaptation of that suspenseful yarn is due out on January 1. The bad news is that it will only be showing in Australian theaters—for the time being, anyway. As a post on Harper’s Web site explains, this movie stars Aussie actor Eric Bana, was directed by Robert Connolly (Balibo, Paper Planes, Deep State), and “was filmed across more than 15 towns in rural Victoria, Australia, last year.” The Dry had originally been planned to premiere last August, but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s no word yet on when it might reach viewers outside of Australia.

• My breath caught for a moment when I heard that FOX-TV was preparing a new Banyon series. What came immediately to mind was the short-lived, 1972 NBC crime drama Banyon, starring Robert Forster as a hard-headed private investigator in 1930s Los Angeles. Could it really be that after all these years, someone was intending to revive/reboot that underrated show? Alas, no. As The Hollywood Reporter makes clear, FOX is “developing an animated comedy based on the Crag Banyon Mysteries books by James Mullaney.

Mullaney and Shane Black will write and executive produce the project, which is titled “Crag Banyon P.I.” It follows the supernatural adventures of an alcoholic ex-cop and current private investigator, Banyon, as he solves cases in an alternate noir, otherworldly reality.

The project marks Mullaney’s first television writing gig. He has published nine books in the Crag Banyon series to date, as well as writing numerous entries in the “Destroyer” and “Red Menace” book series.

• January 8 will bring, to British TV viewers, the return of Rebecka Martinsson, a crime series based on a succession of books by Åsa Larsson—only this season’s episodes introduce a new lead actress.  “[S]eries one of Rebecka Martinsson was a big hit with Nordic Noir fans,” notes The Killing Times. “Starring Ida Engvoll, the Swedish series told the story of a prosecutor who returned to her roots in Kiruna to attend the funeral of the priest that confirmed her. Series two sees Engvoll replaced by Sascha Zacharias in the lead role.” Setting up the storytelling arc of this eight-installment run, The Killing Times says: “Several years have passed and Rebecka’s anxieties about truly fitting in and whether she made the right choice have worsened. As a distraction she throws herself head-first into work to solve gruesome crimes in the area.” Click on the Killing Times link for a trailer.

• In the States, Rebecka Martinsson is available via Acorn TV.

• With the novel coronavirus continuing to discourage social activities of any sort, my search continues for spirited, thoughtful, and at least moderately distinctive small-screen entertainments. A recent discovery was McDonald & Dodds, a light-hearted and oft-clever two-episode ITV show initially broadcast in the spring of 2020. It features Tala Gouveia as Detective Chief Inspector Lauren McDonald, a young, black, thorough-going go-getter from London who has been reassigned to the much quieter city of Bath, England. There she’s partnered with Detective Sergeant Dodds (Jason Watkins), an older white male who has spent years trapped behind a desk, yet retains an uncommon perspicacity when it comes to crime solving. In his review of that program’s pilot, Steve Lewis of Mystery*File writes: “I don’t know about you, but I’m always interested in yet another pair of mismatched homicide policemen, whether British or American. I love watching how their differences play off each other, how get to know each other, and maybe even get to respect each other. Old and worn-out stuff, I know, but when the show is well-written, which it is in this case, and when the players are perfectly selected, even more so this time around, well, to sum it up, I enjoyed this one.” You can see a trailer for the series here. Radio Times reports that a second three-part series of McDonald & Dodds is already in production. Hurrah!

• The Guardian posted a fine review of that series last spring.



• Next up on my to-be-screened list: Amazon Prime’s new neo-noir film I’m Your Woman (trailer above), starring The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Rachel Brosnahan as a sheltered wife and mother who’s “forced to go on the run after her [thief] husband betrays his business partner.” Have any of you faithful Rap Sheet readers seen this two-hour picture? Are you willing to share your opinions of it?

• TV Guide’s look back at what it calls “The 15 Best TV Performances of 2020” applauds, among others, Nathan Lane for his appearance in Showtime’s quirky Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and Matthew Rhys for his headline turn in HBO’s eight-episode Perry Mason. “The mostly-good-but-definitely-not-perfect reboot of Perry Mason was buoyed by an all-good-and-damn-near-perfect performance by Matthew Rhys,” writes Tim Surette, “who brought the classic character to the modern age not just with boozing and f---ing, but with an inner rage that we all could relate to. Rhys was actually the second choice to play Perry Mason; Robert Downey Jr. (who is an executive producer on the series) was slated to take on the role, but his feature film commitments made it impossible, and frankly, we’re all better for it. Fresh off receiving long overdue recognition for The Americans, Rhys made Perry an exhausted grump with a bent moral compass that saw him skirt the law to get justice, but with his soulful eyes during times of defeat and menacing outbursts during times of rage, we not only allowed it, we forgave it. Rhys is the regular-guy hero that our generation needs.”

• IndieWire names Max Allan Collins’ Nate Heller P.I. books among several others that it says deserve TV series treatment:

There’s a reason there are so many detective series on this list—they’re addictive, easily digestible, and the format lends itself perfectly to television. IndieWire’s Kristen Lopez recommends Max Allan Collins’ Nathan Heller series, which follows a wise-cracking private detective who is instrumental in cracking plenty of historically significant cases. The books [17 of them published so far] vacillate between hard-boiled detective novels and historical thrillers, and the ride begins with 1983’s “True Detective,” which finds Heller investigating mob corruption in 1932 Chicago.

• Andrew Nette, my editor on 2019’s wonderful Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, has a new post up in CrimeReads about the late William Hjortsberg and his recently published posthumous novel, Angel’s Inferno (No Exit Press), a sequel to Hjortsberg’s 1978 occult-tinged crime tale, Falling Angel. Much of Nette’s article focuses on differences between the novel Falling Angel and its cinematic adaptation, 1987’s Angel Heart. “A posthumously published book can be tricky property,” writes Nette in CrimeReads, “given the inevitable question of whether the author was able to finalize the manuscript to the degree they wanted, were they alive. Although Angel’s Inferno does not feel incomplete, it lacks the economy and flow of Falling Angel. It is also far darker, more debauched and violent. When you’ve made a pact to sell your soul to Satan, in terms of what you’re prepared to do, the sky, or in Angel’s case, the depths are the limit.”

• Three other CrimeReads pieces worth finding: Dwyer Murphy unearths a 1965 BBC interview between British spy-turned-talk-show host Malcolm Muggeridge and British intelligence officer-turned-espionage-novelist John le Carré; Gabino Iglesias praises the “politically engaged, wildly entertaining novels of Paco Ignacio Taibo II”; and Olivia Rutigliano recalls UK author Evelyn Waugh’s unexpected admiration for the works of Erle Stanley Gardner.

• Happy 10th anniversary to Pulp Covers, a Web site presenting some of the finest scans available of classic novel and magazine fronts. (As you might expect, I’m a frequent visitor.) I don’t see any notice of this milestone on the Pulp Covers main page, but its associated Twitter page mentions that the site now boasts “over 20,000 posts,” and its unidentified editor offers “a big shout-out to all the loyal fans who have stuck with this project over the past decade and encouraged us to continue. Without you, I’d have a lot more free time on my hands.” If you’d like to see how Pulp Covers started, visit its December 2010 postings.

• A half-century-old Columbo mystery, finally solved.

• Interviews to enjoy: Nancie Clare chats with E.A. Barres (They’re Gone), Anthony Horowitz (Moonflower Murders), and H.B. Lyle (The Year of the Gun) for her Speaking of Mysteries podcast; Max Allan Collins—yes, him again—talks with Andrew Sumner of Forbidden Planet about his latest paperback original, Skim Deep, his first Nolan novel in 21 years; and Scott Montgomery of Mystery People scores a brief Q&A with Jeff Vorzimmer, editor of 2020’s The Best of Manhunt 2.

• Finally, a couple of belated good-byes. First, to Sue Henry, who penned separate mystery series featuring either dog-sled racer Jessie Arnold or peripatetic Alaska widow Maxine “Maxie” McNabb. My introduction to her work came in the late 1990s, after I returned from a hike over the historic Chilkoot Pass Trail between Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, and was hungry for books about that path to Klondike gold; Henry’s Termination Dust (1995) fit the bill perfectly. Henry died on November 20 at age 80. Also no longer with us is Alanna Knight, the prolific Scottish author of historical mysteries and romantic thrillers, who passed away on December 2 at age 97. Fellow novelist Martin Edwards remembers her in his blog as “a leading light in Scottish literary circles” and a “stalwart” of the British Crime Writers’ Association, as well as “a biographer and playwright and expert on the work of that gifted fellow Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson.” Knight has at least one last novel, Murder at the World’s Edge (Allison & Busby), due out next year. I offer my condolences to both of their families.

Good-bye to the “Godfather of Tartan Noir”

Glasgow writers William McIlvanney (left) and Craig Robertson sign books during CrimeFest in 2013. (Photo © Ali Karim.)

What’s now known among the Scottish fiction set as Tartan Noir lost a bit of its luster today with the passing of William McIlvanney, the creator of philosophical Glasgow police detective Jack Laidlaw. He died this morning in Netherlee, Glasgow, after what’s being described as “a short illness.” The author was 79 years old.

Scotland’s Herald recalls in its obituary of McIlvanney:

Born in Kilmarnock in 1936 to William and Helen, he attended Kilmarnock Academy before graduating MA (Hons) at Glasgow University. He taught English from 1960 until 1975 in Irvine Royal Academy and then Greenwood Academy, Dreghorn, where he was also assistant head teacher. He held a series of creative writing posts at Grenoble, Vancouver, Strathclyde and Aberdeen universities.

In 1975 he left teaching to devote himself to writing full-time. He was garlanded with prizes, with Docherty (1975) winning the Whitbread Prize. Other awards for his work included the Crime Writers’ Silver Dagger, the Saltire Award and the Glasgow Herald People’s Prize. He influenced heavily a generation of writers both in his native country and further beyond with the debt of U.S. writers being acknowledged last year with the re-publication of his novels in the USA as a standard bearer of European noir.

Britain’s Guardian notes it was McIlvanney’s fourth novel, Laidlaw (1977), that really “caught the fancy of the broader reading public.

Detectives with existential anxieties, marriage problems and a deep literary hinterland are not uncommon now, but Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw was a bright arrival on a dull Scottish literary scene in 1977. In policing the rougher territories of Glasgow and environs, Laidlaw found many things stacked against him; what he had going for him [was] a realistic outlook on life, abundantly laced with wit and philosophical reflection--a voice he inherited from his highly articulate creator.

No one had previously encountered a Glasgow cop who described his regular tipple as “low-proof hemlock” and who hid his Camus and Kierkegaard in the desk drawer, the way an alcoholic keeps a secret stash. McIlvanney could say of Laidlaw, “He knew nothing to do but inhabit the paradoxes,” and make it sound like Glaswegian common sense.

On the back of my 1977 Popular Library edition of Laidlaw (a tale I didn’t get around to reading until 1980), a Los Angeles Herald Examiner critic is quoted as gushing over McIlvanney’s book, calling it “the best detective novel in ages … a brutal, sophisticated, outstanding, unforgettable reading experience.” The author subsequently penned two sequels to that tough and unforgettable work, The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991).

McIlvanney’s fellow author Tony Black, who was fortunate enough to interview him back in 2013, wrote on Facebook earlier today that “Willie was an artist of the finest quality and skill. To be talked about as the greatest writer of his generation was an enormous achievement for a man who grew up with the notion that having your name on a book was akin to walking on the moon.” Meanwhile, novelist John Harvey (Darkness, Darkness) had this to say in his blog:

William McIlvanney was a writer, not a crime writer, though his influence on crime writers and crime writing, in the UK especially, was immense. I first read Laidlaw, the first of his three novels featuring the Glasgow-based police detective Jack Laidlaw, in the late ’70s, soon after it was published. It made an impression that was close to indelible, the writing precise and in the proper sense, poetic, for he was an accomplished poet as well as a novelist, carrying with it the rhythms, sometimes harsh, of the place and people it conveyed and contained. So that when I came to write the first [Charlie] Resnick novel, some ten years later, much of Laidlaw--its force and its ambition--lay behind what I was attempting to do. It was to take me another ten years, no, more, before I even came close.

I first met him some ten years ago, at a festival of crime writing at Frontignan, in the South of France, and I have to say the prospect all but terrified me. It was his reputation, of course, both as [a] writer I revered and as an apocryphal hard drinker who didn’t suffer fools gladly. The real Mac, I found--at least, the one I was privileged to spend time with over that long weekend--was something different. He was generous, surprisingly gentle--he was, in the most positive but old-fashioned sense, a gentleman.

Each evening we met before dinner and sat at a corner table outside one of the cafés by the canal, drank a glass of two of Scotch--it was Aberlour, as I remember--and talked. I enjoyed those times, brief as they were, and cherish them now.

A full catalogue of McIlvanney’s books can be found here.

READ MORE: “William McIlvanney Is Dead,” by Peter Rozovsky (Detectives Beyond Borders); “In Loving Memory,” by Tony Black (The Highland Times).

Listening to the Experts

(Editor’s note: The Rap Sheet has enjoyed a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship over the last few years with Australia-born Scottish author Tony Black. In 2010 he debuted an original short story on this page, “Last Orders,” featuring his series character, journalist-cum-detective Gus Dury. Two years later, we featured an excerpt from Miracle Mile, his second novel about Edinburgh Detective Inspector Rob Brennan. And then last year, we were pleased to host Black’s long-hoped-for interview with William McIlvanney, still best known for his 1977 series debut, Laidlaw [which is now back in print]. In addition to having a new novel out in Britain, Artefacts of the Dead, Black has also released Hard Truths: Cross-Examining Crime Writers, a collection of interviews he’s conducted with accomplished modern contributors to the crime and mystery genre. Below, he briefly explains his intentions with that work.)

Writing, as everyone knows, is a tough business. Just when you think you’ve got on top of the tricky craft aspects along comes the even trickier feat of finding an agent. Then a publisher. Then the industry changes and you find yourself doing the agent and publisher’s job too.

If I was to track the bumps in the road to calling myself an author, I wouldn’t know where to start. I had about 10 years in the wilderness and five novels gathering dust before I got a break with Random House. Twelve books later, the only thing I’m sure about is that it’s a constant learning process … and, nothing like what I thought it might be.

I’ve spoken with dozens of writers about the business of putting words on a page and always found that it’s a familiar tale; precious few have it easy. The path to publication is filled with face-slaps and rejections. We all have our horror stories. My personal favorite is being told by two separate London publishers, on the same day, “We’re not looking for a Scottish writer” and “We have a Scottish writer.” There was also an American agent who wanted to turn my breakthrough novel’s protagonist, Gus Dury, into a “bonnie Scotch lassie,” but I simply stored that away in the “insane/hilarious shit” file.

Writers trade this stuff like football stickers. Once, at a gig with Russel D. McLean (The Lost Sister, Mothers of the Disappeared), he regaled the audience with a tale of one manuscript coming back covered in crayon, and a note attached saying, “As you can see, my child didn’t rate it much either.” Appalled? You should be. But in an industry where the upheaval has been seismic recently--giving everyone with an Internet connection a voice--writers get used to it. Opinions are like arseholes: everybody has them.

I like Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh’s attitude toward critics, which he outlines in one of three interviews I’ve conducted with him, all featured in Hard Truths: “If they were any good, they would have done it themselves and be selling truckloads. But they ain’t, and I am. I know this, they do too. Enough said.”

Black talks with fellow novelist McIlvanney about his writing and the crime-fiction genre, in general.

Another Scottish author, William McIlvanney, recounted for me the halcyon days of gentlemen reviewers, who thought twice about “annihilating an author” because they generally had a book of their own on the way.

The wisdom of these wordsmiths--and that of many more like them--is gold. And crime writers like to share. It’s said they’re the nicest of the writing bunch, because they get all their angst out on the page; for the opposite reason, romance writers are the ones to watch, allegedly.

When I started interviewing the crime writers featured in this collection, a few years ago, it was a way of providing content for the nascent Webzine Pulp Pusher. That was it, plain and simple; the idea of gathering their collected wisdom wasn’t on my mind. But, slowly, I found myself quoting back the interviewees’ responses to reading groups, students, my own interviewers, and just about anyone else who would listen. So, I asked myself, why? The answer was obvious, and I thought, well worth sharing.

Hard Truths: Cross-Examining Crime Writers features my exchanges with the likes of Ian Rankin, Andrew Vachss, Stuart MacBride, Ken Bruen, and a long list of others. The book clocks in at about 85,000 words--and being the words of the best in the business, you can rely on the quality of every one of them.

READ MORE: “Steve Jovanoski Interviews Tony Black” (Crimeculture).

McIlvanney Calls It As He Sees It

(Editor’s note: Over the last few years, I’ve talked with Tony Black several times about the possibility of his interviewing fellow Scottish crime novelist William McIlvanney, who’s best known for penning the cop novel Laidlaw (1977) and its two sequels. Tony--the author of such works as Paying for It, Murder Mile, and Last Orders [that third book an expansion of a short story that ran originally in The Rap Sheet]--repeatedly expressed great interest in such a project. However, he always seemed too busy to approach the elder McIvanney, or else he was having trouble arranging time to speak with him. So imagine my surprise and delight, when Tony recently told me that he would finally be sending me part of an exchange he’d had with Laidlaw’s author, for posting in The Rap Sheet. What follows is that excerpt, taken from a longer piece in Black’s new e-book collection of interviews, Hard Truths: Cross-Examining Crime Writers [UK link here, U.S. link here].)

(Right) William McIlvanney, photo by
Ian Atkinson

William McIlvanney is something of a legend in Scottish crime-writing circles. I choose my words carefully here, for the man himself has described the term Tartan noir as “ersatz.” And who am I to argue with the author of the novel that started the phenomenon?

A good friend of mine recently described McIlvanney as “like meeting a statue that’s come to life,” and that does kind of sum up the reverence with which he’s treated in his home country. But crime writers didn’t always attract such rapturous plaudits.

When McIlvanney wrote Laidlaw, back in the late 1970s, Scotland was not well-known for its crime fiction--something he was to change singlehandedly. McIlvanney’s curmudgeonly cop, Glasgow Detective Inspector Jack Laidlaw, provided the imprimatur for the Scottish best-sellers lists, and our longest-running television drama, Taggart, is a very heavy homage to the work.

This Godfather of Tartan Noir has never been out of fashion, but when his books fell out of print it was definitely time for a revival. I spoke with the 76-year-old McIlvanney on the eve of Edinburgh-based Canongate’s re-publication of his ground-breaking Laidlaw series.

Tony Black: You were writing literary fiction and changed to genre fiction with Laidlaw. It’s an accepted career path now--everybody does it--but when you did it, nobody did. What were you thinking?

William Mcilvanney: I suppose I didn’t give a shit. I just thought that I had written Docherty (1975), which was about the first quarter of the 20th century, and I was desperate to reconnect with contemporary life again and I didn't know what I was going to do, but I had this character--who turned out to be Laidlaw--who was persistently hanging about in my head. And I’d always wanted to write about Glasgow--I’m a convert, I come from Ayrshire--so I had the intensity of a convert for Glasgow, I loved it and wanted to write about that. I had to make this character Glaswegian and he's got to go to bad places so he’s got to be a cop. But I didn’t think, I will now write a detective novel; I came upon the necessity to write a detective novel because I wanted to write about Glasgow and I wanted this abrasive character to be part of it, so I kind of stumbled into the fact that he’s got to be a detective.

TB: So Laidlaw could have been a completely different person--say, a journalist or a paramedic, just somebody who touches different echelons of society?

WM: Oh, absolutely. I was fortunate to know a guy from Kilmarnock, Robbie McInness, who was a detective from Glasgow. [He] told me things about the kind of ambiance the guy would work in, and putting all these things together it’s got to be a detective novel about Glasgow, but I didn’t think it was going to be a game-changer. I’ve always felt that detective novels can fight as middle-weight and quite often fight as fly-weight, so I wasn’t deterred by saying this is a detective novel; this was a character I cared about and the story I wanted to write.

TB: You’re on the record as saying “good writing occurs where it occurs”--you don’t put it in a ghetto if it’s genre fiction.

WM: Yeah, absolutely. I haven’t read much detective fiction, but I knew that when I read about [Philip] Marlowe I thought this is serious writing, he can write. I never had that--well, coming from my background you wouldn’t--snobbishness that says you have to write “literature.” It’s all books, and if they work they work and that’s it.

TB: I believe you don’t buy into the Agatha Christie style of crime fiction. You’ve said it gives you “reality starvation.”

WM: That’s right. She’s also one of the most successful writers in the world and I respect that, she did what she did. But certainly it’s not for me, finding dead bodies in the library and all that, I just cannot believe it when I read it. Maybe it works as a puzzle, but it connects to no kind of sense of life that I understand, and what I try to [do when I] write is to connect with the real life that I know and the people I know.

TB: English crime fiction and Scottish crime fiction are completely different, aren’t they?

WM: I would hope so. I don’t think it’s a national thing, it’s about the way you look at books. I mean, why should I be cheeky to Agatha Christie, who’s far more successful than I could dream of being? But for me it was the book as a puzzle. I think Scottish writing’s always been a bit more serious than that, a bit more solemn. I didn’t want to pass two hours on the train, I wanted to relate to the kind of society I live in and encourage people to do that. [Poet John] Keats said a great thing, that when you’re writing you must “load the rifts with ore.” Don’t just go where you’re going, but give the reader observation, presence along the way. A detective story--if you get it right, you’ll have a plot that’s going to make people read on, but along the way give them serious observation and a sense of the society the novel is passing through, and that’s what I wanted to do with Laidlaw. I thought, what you’ve got here is a great form; if you get it right, folk are going to read it to the end. But you can also do the thing of saying here’s the reality of the story by giving them bonuses of observation and reality along the way, and I thought that’s what Laidlaw could do.

TB: But you subverted the traditional structure with Laidlaw by revealing the murderer on page one …

WM:That’s right. I think if you say it’s a whodunit, the puzzle takes over. It dominates the reader’s concentration throughout, and I thought I don’t want to do that. So if I say, this is the man who did it, then in the process of this story I’ve got to produce something else, because you know already who did it, so it’s a why-dunnit and it’s [about] what will result from his having done it. And you’ve still got a hook, but as well as the hook I wanted to say, OK, this is the crime and eventually we’ll get to the core of why it happened, but along the way what about this for a place? Look what’s around us.

TB: It’s a literary writer’s approach to crime fiction. You obviously want your characters and setting to drive the novel, it’s not about ladling in lots of plot turns.

WM: Absolutely. It’s about Laidlaw, it’s about the boy who [committed the crime] and the strange nature of him and why he did it. It just seemed to me that it was a great form.

Gore Vidal said a great thing once in an essay, he said that we should colonize the genre, we should take genre [works] and try to people them with serious reality--so if it’s a detective story, make something happen to make it real, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to take a form that people would like reading, hopefully, and follow it to the end, but almost below their consciousness you would be giving them the presence of observation and a sense of reality. If you can put that all together, to me, you’ve got an utterly valid book.

TB: Inspector Laidlaw is a bit of a curmudgeon--do protagonists in fiction need to be sympathetic?

MW: It’s advice I’ve never followed. I like him, he’s a pain in the arse in many ways, but I think we all are. I’d absolutely go for several pints with him.

TB: You stated early on that you weren’t interested in a man who was a cop, and Laidlaw had to be a cop who was also a man.

WM: Yeah, you’re not defined by your job, you redefine your job by your humanity in the way you handle it. Laidlaw happens to be a cop, but he’s much more than that and he brings the much-more-than-that to the job. If you’re defined by your job, you’re pathetic, you might as well give up. But you can approach the job in such a way that you redefine the job by the humanity you bring to it, and that’s what I think Laidlaw does; he’s aggressive, he’s a pain in the arse, but he’s serious and he means it.

TB: A lot of characters in crime fiction do tend to be quite one-dimensional, but he’s got a hinterland ...

WM: I could sit here and pontificate about how I created him, but I’m not sure how I did it. It was putting a man who was interesting in situations that would test his nature and that’s about that. He’s a guy I like and I think that all the folk I like can be a bit of a pain in the arse at times. I don’t want to meet folk that are so bland that all you do is exchange the same kinds of platitudes. Laidlaw’s not a platitudes person, he keeps his reactions real and I think that’s important, because when that happens the situation becomes real. I mean, if you think about it, you can go to a party and think, Christ, I might not as well have gone at all, it was all so platitudinously pleasant. And a wee bit of frisson of angst or argument; I love that, Laidlaw brings that to every situation. He doesn’t go in and play a role, he becomes himself.

TB: I heard a rumor that the voice of Jack Laidlaw had come back to you recently. Does that mean there is another novel on the cards, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

WM: I don’t know. I don’t want to get too melodramatic, but I am still slightly haunted by him. I have got some ideas, but I don’t know if they’ll come to fruition. I’ve got an idea for a Laidlaw prequel, with Laidlaw as a younger man, perhaps before he became quite so aggressive. I’ve also got an idea for a twilight Laidlaw--where he’s out of the police--that I’ve had for a while. [Sean] Connery once phoned me and said, “I have a window,” and I thought, I’ve got several windows, but what he meant was that in his career there was a gap and could I write a treatment and let him see it. I wrote about 18 pages of a story in which Laidlaw becomes involved after he’s packed up the police. I won’t elaborate on the idea--I know you wouldn’t steal it, Tony, but somebody might--[but] I sent it to him and he said his secretary really likes it, but he thought it was a book not a film. And I think he was probably right. It strikes me that it’s an idea that could be resurrected.

(Right) Hard Truths, the source of this interview excerpt.

TB: Laidlaw, of course, operates in Glasgow--that city does get a bad reputation. It’s a cliché, but it is No Mean City ...

WM: Do you know a city that isn’t hard? I mean, I lived in Paris for a little while and it’s possibly my favorite city, but I remember walking into certain places and thinking, I’d better get out of here. It’s a hard place, I mean, Parisian crime is hard stuff and I think Glasgow has a reputation which is not unearned, but which is exaggerated. Besides being a hard town, it’s a terrifically warm town, I think. It’s a place, as I once said, where Greta Garbo wouldn’t have been alone--she’d have been in a pub somewhere and somebody would shout out, “Hey, you in the funny hat, come over and have a Blue Lagoon!”

Glasgow has a terrific quality of engaging you. I’ve had a lot of people who know about the books, approaching me. I went into the Horseshoe Bar once and ordered a drink, and as I lifted it to my lips a guy said, “It was Friday night in the city of the stare ...” And I thought, Christ, I wrote that, and we went on to have a terrific conversation. I didn’t ask if he’d went beyond the first sentence, though, I didn’t want to spoil a sweet moment.

READ MORE: “William McIlvanney: The Father of Tartan Noir,” by Susan Mansfield (The Scotsman); “William McIlvanney: Laying Down the Law,” by Bram E. Gieben (The Skinny); “Laidlaw,” by Jim Murdoch (The Truth About Lies).

In the Shadow of Greatness

Not long ago, William McIlvanney--the so-called Godfather of Tartan Noir, best known for his 1977 series debut, Laidlaw--took on a new challenge, making his acting debut in a music video. As Scotland on Sunday explained, the 73-year-old author and poet “plays a ghost in the music video, which was shot yesterday, to accompany the song ‘My Father’s Coat’ by James Grant, formerly of the band Love and Money.” According to the newspaper,

The short film sees a young man visit the grave of his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship. Later, he falls asleep in his dingy flat only to be awakened by his father [McIlvanney], who is standing behind the sofa in his best suit and tie.

Now unable to sleep, the son grabs some money and wanders into the city streets. At the Barras market he stops and stares at a coat he recognises as belonging to his father. Standing in the market and reflected in a mirror, his father watches over his son once again. The ghost later reappears in an old-fashioned pub, wearing the coat and reading the Racing Post.

The video’s director, Peter Martin, said: “It is about how you turn into your dad in your middle age. The song is nine minutes long with a four-and-a-half-minute guitar solo and is unusually Scottish in tone.”

To play the part of McIlvanney’s son in this video, Martin hired another Scottish crime writer, Tony Black (Loss). Afterward, Black wrote us to say that McIlvanney “is possibly the most unassuming star I’ve ever met, a true gentleman and top bloke, I loved him to bits.” He also sent along a few photos taken during the filming.

Left to right: Director Martin with McIlvanney and Black

Black (far left) and singer Grant (far right) prepare for a scene

Black notes that this video “was shot on location in Glasgow, in a variety of spots including a burlesque club and the Necropolis!” And he adds: “It was a real blast for me to meet McIlvanney ... Laidlaw is one of my all-time favorite novels and quite possibly the greatest crime novel ever to come out of Scotland. McIlvanney was ... hilariously funny and great company the whole time. I spent the entire two days of the shoot sitting open-mouthed listening to his insights on writing-the craft and the business. He’s an incredibly bright bloke. He looks like a matinée idol as well, so there was no shortage of people coming up to him off the street and saying hello to the star!”

It sounds like a good time was had by all.

UPDATE: A cut of that music video can now be seen below.

Bullet Points: The Slow-Down Edition

With August on the wane, and the prospect of fall in the weather, The Rap Sheet is going to slow things up a bit for the next couple of weeks. That means somewhat fewer posts, and a hiatus for our “Books You Have to Read” series until Friday, September 11. However, we’ll continue to keep track of crime-fiction-related news developments, and bring those to you as soon as possible. Speaking of such bits and pieces ...

• The sales of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels benefited from President John Kennedy taking an interest in them. Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley, Harlan Coben, and Alex Kava received the seal of approval from First Reader Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Now it seems to be George Pelecanos’ turn. According to The Daily Telegraph, the selection of books President Barack Obama has packed along with him on his family’s vacation to Martha’s Vineyard features Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, David McCullough’s John Adams, Richard Price’s Lush Life, Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, and Pelecanos’ newest paperback novel, The Way Home. If history provides any sort of guide, bookstores should expect to see sales of The Way Home shoot up over the next few weeks.

• We’re adding a new blog listing in the right-hand column. It will connect you to Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes, written by “a couple of P.I.s who also happen to be writers.” Shaun Kaufman and Colleen Collins are co-owners of a detective agency out in Denver, Colorado, called Highlands Investigations & Legal Services. They also apparently sit on the board for the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. Their still-new blog, they say, is “geared to mystery writers, and contains weekly [posts] on investigative trends, answering writers’ questions about private investigations, and investigative topics of interest.” If you’re setting out to write a private-eye novel, but lack the professional experience of Dashiell Hammett, then Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes just might provide some useful background and tips.

• Another addition to our extensive blogroll: Classic Paperback Reads, in which Steve Kaye (aka Clay Burnham) satisfies his “overwhelming need ... to celebrate the thrilling images of past paperbacks, and to keep them alive.” Also well worth a visit.

• Actress Jorja Fox muses on her return to CSI.

• Here are your Davitt Award winners for 2009.

• We missed mentioning the death on August 14 of Philip Saltzman. An American TV producer and writer, Saltzman worked over the years on The Fugitive, Felony Squad, Perry Mason, The F.B.I., Columbo, A Man Called Sloane, Barnaby Jones, and many other projects, a number of them in collaboration with producer Quinn Martin. Both Stephen Bowie, at The Classic TV Blog, and TV historian Ed Robertson (see here) have posted fond remembrances of the late Mr. Saltzman.

• Also worth reading in The Classic TV Blog is Bowie’s analysis of how Los Angeles has been perceived--and misrepresented--by some familiar crime shows.

• Details of Left Coast Crime 2011, which will take place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, have finally been worked out. Pari Noskin Taichert reports in Murderati that the guests of honor will be Margaret Coel and Steven Havill, and that a lifetime achievement award will be given during the festivities to Martin Cruz Smith. More info here.

• Meanwhile, Bouchercon 2010 in San Francisco is still 14 months away (which means it’s high time for me to start planning my attendance), but already there’s been an announcement of who will be headlining the 2011 event in St. Louis. Robert Crais and Charlaine Harris will appear as the American guests of honor, while Colin Cotterill and Val McDermid have been tapped as international guests of honor. The lifetime achievement prize will go to Sara Paretsky.

• A new Agatha Christie short story featuring Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot? Britain’s Daily Mail published “The Capture of Cerebrus” on Sunday. And Sarah Weinman offers some background about this “lost” story and its future here.

• How do James Bond and Matt Helm compare? Find out here.

• Author Marshall Karp (Flipping Out) talks with UK blogger Ben Hunt about being compared with Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiaasen, L.A.’s reputation as “a giant theme park of the bad, the mad and the utterly insane,” and more. Their exchange is here.

• American right-wingers have already gone to crazy town with their lie-filled denouncements of President Obama’s health-care reform initiatives, and they threaten to turn their profoundly negative campaign into even more of a farce. But the idea that the Republican’ts are now “promising to protect seniors’ Medicare from Dems”? That’s just comedy.

• For the benefit of a videographer, Robert Crais and Gregg Hurwitz discuss the inspiration and execution of Hurwitz’s newest novel, Trust No One.

• How many of you remember that Mary Ann Mobley was originally slated to play April Dancer in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., but was replaced by Stefanie Powers?

• Ian Rankin talks with The Guardian about his new protagonist, Malcolm Fox (a “quite different proposition from [Detective Inspector John] Rebus ... he works in one of the police force’s most unpopular departments: the professional standards unit, investigating other cops”), star of the forthcoming novel The Complaints. At the same time, some critics already say “the omens are not good” for Rankin’s post-Rebus fiction. Could we be jumping the gun a bit, guys? How about if we actually read the book and see how readers react before pronouncing this Scottish author’s career moribund?

• Although Rankin accepted induction as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire back in 2002, 72-year-old fellow Scottish novelist William McIlvanney (Laidlaw) has declined the same honor. He told Scotland on Sunday: “It’s something that I tried on in my mind, and I found it didn’t fit. The sleeves were too long, and it just wasn’t part of me. It felt like trying to put a top hat on a man in a boiler suit.”

• Happy birthday, Allan Pinkerton and Sean Connery.

• Damn! The release of Martin Scorcese’s Shutter Island, the film based on Dennis Lehane’s creepy 2003 novel of the same name, has now been set back to February 2010. it was supposed to premiere in October of this year.

• Are you watching the new USA Network Web series Little Monk, which clues fans of Tony Shalhoub’s obsessive-compulsive detective in on Adrian Monk’s back-story? You can catch up with it here.

• Former Seattle city librarian turned book personality Nancy Pearl spotlights nine mysteries that might help you fill out your late summer reading list.

• DC Comics’ Vertigo Crime line has finally arrived.

• And Mark Troy, author of the Honolulu-set Val Lyon P.I. stories, celebrates Hawaii’s 50th anniversary of U.S. statehood this month by reminding us of “two of the best mystery/adventure shows to appear on television”: Hawaiian Eye (1959-1963) and Adventures in Paradise (1959-1962). He has video clips here.