(This post was originally published on the Authors Electric site "Do Authors
Dream of Electric Books?)
You’ve probably come across references to Tartan Noir on the
internet and various other places, and if you walk into a bookstore in Scotland, the
chances are you’ll see a display labelled Tartan Noir. But what is Tartan Noir?
The name is an odd mix. The tartan part of the name smacks
of tourism, kilts, heather and bagpipes, all the stuff that attracts people to Scotland,
although it is not all that relevant in today’s modern world. The second part
of the title –Noir – is more reminiscent of blood and gore, and all the
horrible things that happen in the darkest of crime fiction. So it is an odd
mix indeed.
It was actually James Ellroy who coined the name when he
referred to Ian Rankin as the King of Tartan Noir in the 1990s. Since then it
seems to have been taken up to describe Scottish crime fiction in general, and
has now been given historical antecedents.
The origins of Tartan Noir in Scottish literature are
claimed to be rooted in the works of James Hogg, Robert Louis Stevenson and
William McIlvaney.
James Hogg’s Confessions
of a Justified Sinner, written in 1824, seems to be the earliest influence.
This novel has been variously described as a psychological case study; a gothic
novel with elements of horror; a satire of extreme theology; plus an early
example of crime fiction. It is said to be the earliest example of a novel
using an alter-ego, and involves a battle between good and evil. It is
considered to be an influence on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, as well as James Robertson’s novel, The Testament of Gideon Mack, and
various others.
Jekyll and Hyde, written
by Stevenson in 1886 uses split personality, and continues the theme of the
battle between good and evil. He claims the idea came to him in a nightmare and
he called it ‘a fine bogy tale’. In her essay The Dark Threads of Tartan Noir, Carole E. Bannerman writes –
‘Like every noir
writer since then, Stevenson situates evil in the heart of man, and then places
that man in the heart of a city. The city becomes a manifestation of the moral
hypocrisy and the mock respectability that the noir writer attacks.’
Tartan Noir was also heavily influenced by American writers
such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James Ellroy, who were all
writing hard-boiled detective fiction, and many Scottish authors followed in
their footsteps, probably beginning with William McIlvaney, who has been termed
the Godfather of Tartan Noir, a title that bemuses him. When he wrote Laidlaw, he said he had no intention of
writing a crime novel. He wanted to write a story that was real, not one where
the book was taken up with a murder and whodunit. It just happened that the
character he chose was a detective with a troubled past and present.
Many Scots have a fascination for gruesome events,
particularly those that have happened in the past, therefore it is not
surprising that Burke and Hare, the body snatchers who operated in Edinburgh
between 1827-1828, and Deacon Brodie, a respectable town councillor by day and
a housebreaker at night, are considered influential in the rise of the type of
dark writing labelled noir. In fact, Deacon Brodie is considered to be one of
the influences behind the writing of Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.
So where does that take us in defining Tartan Noir? Is it
the broad sweep of Scottish crime fiction, or is it a subset of hard-boiled and
dark crime, that takes the reader to a dark and scary place?
Maybe if we look at the issues Tartan Noir novels explore,
that will help us decide. These include psychological and socio-economic
issues, hard-boiled crime, and dark crime. The characters are invariably
flawed, often with split personalities and they are anti-heroes rather than
heroes. So does this rule out cosy crime? And how dark does dark crime have to
be? Or is it safer to include all Scottish crime? I don’t know. Do you have an
opinion?
Oh, and before I go, would anyone like to comment whether I
fit into the Tartan Noir category with my Dundee crime series of books? I’d
love to know.
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