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| Dundee Police Headquarters |
Last week’s Dundee Courier and Advertiser, the newspaper for
the whole of the Tayside region, displayed a provocative headline – Dundee
is Murder Capital of Scotland
That was some statement. But as the writer of the Dundee Crime
Series, it certainly divorces me from comparisons with Midsomer Murders. Not that my books were ever like this because my
writing is considerably darker than the popular cosy crime series. However,
when a writer chooses a specific town in which to set their murders, the body
count is liable to go up.
So, what makes Dundee the murder capital of Scotland . Well,
it’s nothing to do with the body count, and it’s all to do with statistics.
Apparently, between 2012 - 2013, there were 62 homicides in Scotland . Now,
a prolific crime writer can easily manage to beat that figure in the area they
write about. I’m sure Midsomer Murders’ body
count is higher than that over the space of one series.
Of those 62 homicides, six occurred in Dundee
– great word that ‘occurred’, it really doesn’t do justice to the bloodthirsty
nature of the crimes. Six doesn’t seem a lot to warrant giving Dundee the title of ‘murder capital’, but here’s where
statistics come into play. It’s all to do with population, you see. The lower
the population the higher the percentage.
So, let’s compare it with Glasgow where there were 19 murders over the
same period. Surely this should have made Glasgow ,
Scotland Glasgow , however, has a far
higher population than Dundee , so the 19
murders only equated to 3.19 murders per 100,000 people. Can you have .19 of a
murder? And what happened to the other .81? Ah well such things are beyond me.
Anyway, to get back to the point. Dundee ’s
measly six murders equated to 4.05 per 100,000 people. There’s those pesky
numbers below the decimal point again. Ah, well, I’m not going to worry about
that this time.
Funnily enough, both Edinburgh
and Aberdeen
only had two murders each. Ian Rankin’s going to be out of a job. But me, as
long as I keep setting my books in Dundee ,
Scotland
Check out the Dundee Crime series when you have a minute,
because there are more murders in my writing territory than there are in Ian
Rankin’s.
Chris Longmuir
