Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Today’s theme was:
Top Ten Books That Would Be On Your Syllabus If You Taught X 101 (examples: YA fantasy 101, feminist literature 101, magic in YA 101, classic YA lit 101, world-building 101)
MODERN SCOTTISH CRIME FICTION 101
In the last 30 years or so, Scottish crime fiction has become such a HUGE part of the Scottish literature scene. Crime fiction allows authors to explore their cities and countries through the eyes of people who are constantly involved in everything going on – the police. Crime fictions authors can talk politics, economy, people, and so much more. When living in Scotland, I was lucky enough to volunteer for the first ever Scottish crime writing festival, Bloody Scotland, in its first year and work as the volunteer coordinator in its second year, and through this experience I met and spoke to SO many amazing crime fiction authors. I’m not even a teacher, and I’m getting excited about what I could teach in this class. Let’s start with the syllabus.
The books around which most of the course would be centered:
Laidlaw by William McIlvanney – The novel that MANY crime fiction authors credit as the reason they began writing crime fiction. (GR)
The Falls by Ian Rankin – the book that got me into reading Scottish crime fiction. I could seriously do a whole class on Ian Rankin and his novels, but I’ve limited myself to one. (GR)
44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith – More of a mystery series than crime, but it offers a different take and the whole feel of the novel is different. (GR)
The Crow Road by Iain Banks (GR)
The books we’d also discuss:
Still Midnight by Denise Mina (GR)
The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid (GR)
Glasgow Kiss by Alex Gray (GR)
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves (GR)
The Blackhouse by Peter May (GR)
Shatter the Bones by Stuart MacBride (GR)
Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre (GR)
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I could seriously keep going. There are so many amazing Scottish crime fiction authors. I don’t have Lin Anderson on here or Craig Robertson, Quintin Jardine, Caro Ramsay, Gordon Brown. Okay, I’m forcing myself to stop. If you like crime fiction, you’ve got to check out these amazing Scottish authors.
Caught Read Handed 
Not gonna lie, though I haven’t read any of Rankin/Haig’s books (nor do I know if they are Scottish or not) I thought “I wonder if there will be a R/H” mentioned in this syllabus. AND THERE WAS! #1 promoter of their titles is yo. Without fail.
Cheers,
Joey via. thoughts and afterthoughts.
It’s like a compulsion now. I love them so much that I have to mention them when I can. 🙂
Very cool list! I’m going to have to check out a few of these. 🙂
I hope you do! Let me know what you think!
This is a brilliant topic! Huge fan of both Ian Banks and Christopher Brookmyre. Adding the rest to my TBR. Let me know when your class is up and running – I’ll be the first to sign up! 🙂
🙂 I SO want to teach it! I think it’d be brilliant!
Oooh, this is a cool topic! I don’t read much crime fiction, but I usually enjoy it when I do. What would be your number one rec? Ian Rankin?
YES YES YES. Lol. Ian Rankin for sure!
I normally read British crime fiction – I know I would love these books. Adding to my list! I would add M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth. I love that series. It is cozy, not thriller. The best ones are the mysteries that center around his home village of Lochdubh.
Ha! Kristi beat me to it. 😀 I second the Hamish Macbeth recommendation. I even verified that Beaton was born in Scotland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Chesney
Haha! I’m definitely adding her to my list of books to check out. 🙂
They make excellent audiobooks with all the lovely accents (of course I only know one person IRL with a Scottish accent, but the narrator sounds good to me).
We have the latest book in the series in audiobook (none of the others) and I was thinking of checking that out.
Haven’t heard of those novels, but I’ll definitely check them out!
Question: do those books need to be read in order or can you read any of them? Asking because we don’t seem to have the first book in our library system but have others.
I started in the middle. Death of a Village was my first one. I completely bounced around the series! Then I’d get to an earlier one and think, “aha! Here’s the one before Willie Lamont started running the Italian restaurant.” So you don’t need to read in order. But things do progress in Hamish’s life as you go through the series.