Tartan Noir

[Yellow Fang]

Apparently people in the US think that Oxford is the murder capital of Britain.

Blackbird Leys is not that bad, not that I suppose Morse's old Jag was ever seen around there.

 

[mistyoptic]

Didn't take to Ian Rankin but enjoyed Peter May's Shetland series (although not his China series)

 

[Yellow Fang]

I am reading GBH by Ted Lewis, who wrote the book Get Carter was based on. Not tartan but definitely noir. A pity he died aged 42. A good thing about it is that it does not push the bounds of plausibility. No one is building an atomic bomb. The Yakuza is not involved. The criminal mastermind is not the detective's mother.

 

[Drago]

There seems to be a lot of it around. I suppose Ian Rankin started it, or at least gave it a good shove forwards. I heard on the radio there's a detective based on the Shetland Islands, wtf! Like a good cyclist, I went on a cycling holiday, this time around the Outer Hebrides, and I find there's a writer based in the Outer Hebrides: Peter May, I got one of his books. Not bad so far, although I'm only a few chapters in. I am hoping the verasimilitude is going to be a bit more verasimilitudinous than a couple of recent crime thrillers I've read recently (I'm looking at you Stuart MacBride). How can the Outer Hebrides be a crime hot spot? There's only about 20,000 of them and half of them must be in Stornaway. The notice at the Castlebay hostel said there's no point locking up your bicycles. I think we were pushing the boundaries of acceptable convention by cycling on the Sabbath.

The Northern isles aren't all sweetness and light. Drugs is a big problem on Shetland, less so on Orkney. Murders aren't so common but do crop up. Firearms licencing, domestic incidents and motoring offences are the bread and butter up there. Used to be a bit of a public order problem, fisticuffs between islanders and the oil workers, but that seems to have died a death. Theres isnt a massive amount for CID to do, but there isnt a huge CID so they dont get time to sit in the pub. Jeez, i can remember when most police starions had bars and when anyone not in uniform entered we'd start singing, "Hey diddly dee, he's in the CID."

 

[Proto]

Easy mistake to make, Americans thinking .

To be fair, Oxford and Midsomer are only a few miles apart.