Glasgow: A Sense Of Place in Scottish Crime Fiction

What a great tour into Sue Walker’s literary work you just guided us through Mairiuna!

It is so interesting that I will continue on the same path for a while and explore how the unique atmosphere of a particular place provides inspiration to an author. And come to think of it, to capture such “sense of place” is a great way to export cities and places unto the literary map.

Now that we covered Edinburgh in the last posts, what about Glasgow ? As much as Edinburgh, the city should be able to acclaim it’s own “sense of place” under the pen of many crime novels writers.

As I did for Edinburgh, I started my quest by researching crime fiction novelists born in Glasgow and having chosen Glasgow as the setting to their plots.

First, I went down the list of the 52 Crime Novels set in Glasgow on BooksFromScotland website and from these 52 novels, I drilled down a list of Glasgow’s natives.

They are:

– Denise Mina

– Caro Ramsay

– Alex Gray

– Campbell Armstrong

– Christopher Brookmyre

– Hugh Collins

Did I miss anyone ? Kindly let me know if the case may be.

Scottish crime fiction author Denise Mina, while being interviewed by Stephanie Padilla of the New Mystery Reader, said about  ” a sense of place ” :

S.P. : Your previous 4 novels, as this one, take place in Glasgow. You paint a dark and gritty picture of this city so vibrantly that it feels as if it’s a character in itself, but it also seems to be infused with a love-hate type of vibe, so which is it, really?

Denise Mina-Scottish Crime Fiction Author

D.M. : Glasgow is hard going. I love it here and find it a very honest city, I share a lot of its values and love that people talk to each other and enjoy fighting. It’s very like New York in fact. I remember a carton about New York and LA. In the LA one the person say ‘have a nice day’ but means ‘fuck you’. In the New York one the person says ‘fuck you’ but means ‘have a nice day’. Glaswegians are mad about courtesy but will shout at you in the street if you make the mistake of being a little rude to them. I keep setting books here because I think most cities are universal. They’re organic and many features of one city will in variably be true of any other. Except for restaurants and the quality of the coffee.