Tartan Noir

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Tartan Noir is a form of crime fiction particular to Scotland and Scottish writers. It has its roots in Scottish literature but borrows elements from elsewhere, including from the work of James Ellroy and the hardboiled genre. The name itself was coined by Ellroy, who called Ian Rankin "the king of tartan noir" for a book cover.^{[citation needed]}

1 Roots and Influences
2 Characteristics
3 Criticism
4 Limits of Tartan Noir
5 Tartan Noir writers
6 Landmark Tartan Noir titles

[edit] Roots and Influences

Tartan Noir draws on the traditions of Scottish literature, being strongly influenced by James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. These works dwell on the duality of the soul; the nature of good and evil; issues of redemption, salvation and damnation amongst others. "Caledonian antisyzygy" - a Scottish phenomenon of the duality of a single entity - is a key driving force in Scottish literature, but appears especially prominently in the Tartan Noir genre.

Influences from outside Scotland most noticeably include the hardboiled genre, particularly Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This can be most clearly seen in the work of Allan Guthrie, although the work of Ian Rankin also bears hardboiled's imprints. More recent influences include the work of James Ellroy, whose focus on police and societal corruption has proven especially resonant with Ian Rankin. Ed McBain's use of the police procedural genre has also been influential.

Outside of the US, European traditions have had an impact in Scottish crime writing that is not so obvious in England. Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret goes after the criminals, but refuses to judge them, seeing it rather as a human situation to be understood. Echoes of Maigret can be clearly seen in Inspector Jack Laidlaw, lead character of William McIlvanney's Laidlaw. The social criticism in Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Martin Beck detective series is also present in many works of Tartan Noir.

With its combination of the police procedural with Simenon's humanism, McIlvanney's Laidlaw novel can be seen as the first proper novel of the genre. While Laidlaw is critically important, and one many authors drew inspiration from, the TV series Taggart established crime in a Scottish setting in the popular imagination. It is plausible to speculate that Glenn Chandler, creator of Taggart and writer of many of its early stories, drew inspiration from Laidlaw. Both share a setting (Glasgow) and involve the investigations by Glasgow police into murders.

[edit] Characteristics

The worldview of Tartan Noir tends toward the cynical and world-weary, typified by hardboiled. Many of the protagonists in Tartan Noir stories are anti-heroes, with readers not automatically being expected to sympathise with them – an illustrative example appears in Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses when Inspector Rebus blatantly steals bread rolls and milk from a shop, without apology or remorse. The main characters often go through personal crises in the course of the stories, with these crises often forming a key part of the story. Often the main character has personal reasons for dealing with the crime, whether through something in their history or sense of right and wrong. When Val McDermid's character Lindsay Gordon has a friend killed at a trade union conference, she uses the murder and homophobic jibes aimed at her former lover's death as impetus for catching a murderer.

[edit] Criticism

There is considerable critical discussion of whether the genre is a viable one, or one created by publishers seeking a unique selling point for an audience tired of a glut of US and English crime fiction. William McIlvanney has said that the whole genre is "ersatz".

The wide spectrum of authors from Val McDermid to Ian Rankin has given critics further grounds for questioning the existence of the genre, as has its very name. Charles Taylor has noted that the term has an "inescapably condescending tinge", noting "it's a touristy phrase, suggesting that there's something quaint about hard-boiled crime fiction that comes from the land of kilts and haggis."

In terms of the genre itself, the most consistent criticism has been the treatment of female characters and women in general. In Laidlaw, women have been reduced to walk-on parts as grieving mothers, daughters to be worried over, or goddesses to be ogled and leered over. Even Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus books, there are frequent instances of sexism.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Limits of Tartan Noir

Although there are many Scottish authors who are considered Tartan Noir, not all Scottish authors writing about crime can be considered to be Tartan Noir. For example, although Iain Banks deals with a crime in The Crow Road, his main body of work and overall style is too individual to be considered Tartan Noir.