Try on Some Tartan Noir
Noir storytelling has an interesting history. The term “noir” is a French word that translates to “dark” or “black” and was, as a storytelling genre, first paired with the word “film” by French film critics in the 1950’s to describe a style of Hollywood filmmaking in the 1940’s and 1950’s of crime films that focused on the seamier (dark) side of life. The classic film noirs include The Maltese Falcon (widely considered the first film noir), Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train and The Postman Always Rings Twice.
The term noir was then retrograded to include the novels and fiction that were the basis for the films made in the classic film noir period. They included the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, from the 1920’s and 1930’s. Noir fiction than became a subgenre of crime fiction that focused on dark, cynical and pessimistic tones, and gritty urban settings. These novels featured morally flawed characters, usually fighting against societal corruption and sometimes succumbing to darker impulses.
Noir fiction continues today in the works of James Ellroy, Walter Mosely, Dennis Lehane and others. But I wanted to focus on a subgenre of the Noir genre called Tartan Noir. Why you may ask? It is because two of my most favorite authors work this vein of literary gold. But more on them later, because first what is “Tartan Noir”? Well, it’s noir fiction set in an urban Scottish setting dealing with what noir fiction typically deals with; dark, cynical, morally compromised people and situations.
The father of Tartan Noir is a gent named William McIlvanney in his “Laidlaw” novels; Laidlaw (1977), The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983) and Strange Loyalties (1991). These are crime novels featuring Inspector Jack Laidlaw, all owned by the Mercer County Library System. Other well-know Tartan Noir novelists include Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Caro Ramsay and Christopher Brookmyre, who all have multiple novels available here at the Mercer County Library System.
But I wanted to concentrate on two of whom I consider not only the best of the Tartan Noir crowd, but two of the best novelists writing today. And they are Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride. These authors provide not only endless entertainment, but create stories, situations and characters that make you stop and think. Not just the usual whodunnit of crime and mystery novels, but also what would you do if confronted with the circumstances their main characters face? Would you have done that same thing? Was that the best choice to make under those conditions? Was the action taken the best moral decision they could have made?
Their characters are very well-drawn with heroic impulses along with very human flaws that make the characters, believe it or not, even more likeable and some even loveable. The writing for both these authors is top-notch.
Both have series based on police detectives that make up the bulk of their novels: John Rebus for Rankin and Logan McRae for MacBride. They have other series and non-series novels, but these two lead characters make up the majority. And both series have new entries for the past year. You can read any title in theses series at any time, but I would recommend reading them in order (for the order of titles, see the end of this post), as the characters grow and change with each novel. Also, the main characters are not the only persons of interest in the novels. Each series include friends, co-workers and even antagonists that are interesting and have growth of their own throughout the series runs.
In this novel a retired John Rebus has been arrested for the attempted murder of his old nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty (as detailed in the novel before this one Death at the Sign of the Rook), but falls into a mystery of a murdered fellow prisoner and uses his time behind bars to solve the murder. This one has all the usual characters helping or hindering our hero in his quest to solve the mystery. There is Siobhan Clarke, Rebus’ protégé; Christine Esson, who is Clarke’s protégé; and Malcom Fox, a detective and former Professional Standards officer now in the higher police bureaucracy, who does not quite trust Rebus and sometimes helps (and sometimes doesn’t).
In this novel, half the Aberdeen police force is off sick with something that sounds like COVID-19 (but is never named) and Inspector McRae has to handle not only his workload, but several other Inspectors’ cases with just a skeleton crew of his usual misfit team. They need to investigate a suspect fire at a migrant hotel - looking like a racial incident that took the life of a young migrant child - and a growing number of murders happening across the city.
I highly recommend both these series, but if you like humor along with your mystery, I suggest you go with the Stuart MacBride Logan McRae series. I have never laughed so much at such a dark setting. MacBride’s novels give a sense of hope to go along with the usual noir trappings as even though the principals are full of character flaws, all of them (except the criminals) have got hearts of gold and try to do what is right and best. The supporting characters in this series include Roberta Steel, an abrasive woman who was once McRae’s boss, famed for her foul-mouthed dressing downs of her subordinates, but really has everyone’s best interests at heart; Simon Rennie, a detective that makes McRae wonder about his powers of deduction so much that he makes Rennie’s ringtone “If I Only Had a Brain” from the Wizard of Oz; and “Tufty” Quirell that most of the characters in the book think is out of his depth, but I think is a secret genius, as the off the charts computer skills he uses to research and find information seem to always pull McRae’s bacon out of the fire.
Ian Rankin’s Rebus series in order:
1 Knots and Crosses (1987)
2 Hide and Seek (1990)
3 Tooth and Nail (1992)
aka Wolfman
4 Strip Jack (1992)
5 The Black Book (1993)
6 Mortal Causes (1994)
7 Let It Bleed (1995)
8 Black and Blue (1997)
9 The Hanging Garden (1998)
10 Dead Souls (1999)
10.5 Death is Not the End (1998)
11 Set in Darkness (2000)
12 The Falls (2001)
13 Resurrection Men (2001)
14 A Question of Blood (2003)
15 Fleshmarket Alley (2004)
aka Fleshmarket Close
16 The Naming Of The Dead (2006)
17 Exit Music (2007)
18 Standing in Another Man's Grave (2012)
19 Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013)
In the Nick of Time (2014) (with Peter James)
20 Even Dogs in the Wild (2015)
21 Rather Be the Devil (2016)
22 In a House of Lies (2018)
23 A Song For the Dark Times (2020)
24 A Heart Full of Headstones (2022)
25 Midnight and Blue (2024)
Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae Series in order:
1 Cold Granite (2005)
2 Dying Light (2006)
3 Broken Skin (2007)
aka Bloodshot
4 Flesh House (2008)
5 Blind Eye (2009)
6 Dark Blood (2010)
7 Shatter the Bones (2011)
8 Close to the Bone (2013)
9 The Missing and the Dead (2015)
10 In the Cold Dark Ground (2016)
11 The Blood Road (2018)
12 All That's Dead (2019)
13 This House of Burning Bones (2025)
-Larry, Acquisitions and Cataloging
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