Why did I love this book?
I’m not usually a fan of the police procedural type of crime novel, but I would always make an exception for this book. Arguably the book that kick-started the ‘Tartan Noir’ genre of modern Scottish crime fiction, this story follows the gritty, witty Chandler-esque detective, Laidlaw, as he tries to track down the murderer of a Glasgow teenager.
This sounds like the plot of so many crime novels, but what elevates this book for me is the wonderful prose that surrounds the hard Glasgow setting, along with Laidlaw’s sense of social injustice and inequality and his empathy with those very inhabitants of the criminal underworld he is forced to navigate.
4 authors picked Laidlaw as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
First in “a crime trilogy so searing it will burn forever into your memory. McIlvanney is the original Scottish criminal mastermind” (Christopher Brookmyre, international bestselling author).
The Laidlaw novels, a groundbreaking trilogy that changed the face of Scottish fiction, are credited with being the founding books of the Tartan Noir movement that includes authors like Val McDermid, Denise Mina, and Ian Rankin. Says McDermid of William McIlvanney: “Patricia Highsmith had taken us inside the head of killers; Ruth Rendell tentatively explored sexuality; with No Mean City, Alexander McArthur had exposed Glasgow to the world; Raymond Chandler had dressed the darkness…