Bloody Scotland set to return this week to celebrate crime fiction

Based in Stirling, Bloody Scotland brings together hundreds of writers and fans to celebrate the best of the year’s crime fiction. 

Attendees this year include Val McDermid and Christopher Brookmyre whilst the event will also play host to a crime writers football match between Scotland and England. 

The National has been speaking with some of the author’s nominated for both the Scottish Crime Debut of the Year and The McIlvanney Prize – awarded to the best crime book of the year. 

Louise Welsh

Nominated for a sequel written twenty years after its predecessor, Louise Welsh says she initially wasn’t keen on bringing The Second Cut to life. 

It focuses on Rilke, an auctioneer based in Glasgow who first appeared in 2002’s The Cutting Room. 

“It was funny because I’d been invited to write sequels to this book several times and I didn’t want to spoil it”, says Welsh.

She continued: “It worked at first and if I did it wrong I thought it might taint everything. For a while, I didn’t feel I had anything new to say.”

Eventually though, something did change. Having an LGBTQ+ character as its protagonist, Welsh says it was a “different experience” writing the second novel. 

She added: “Twenty years ago, you weren’t thinking that there would be equal marriage one day. You’d be getting ballot papers then saying ‘don’t you think these filthy queers’ should be kept away'." 

Louise Welsh has been nominated for the McIlvanney Prize for The Second Cut

“That was the landscape then and we can’t be complacent about it now but it is hugely different.

“The Cutting Room was written with a lot of anger but I still loved writing it, I had a lot of pleasure in getting it off my chest.”

Although it might deal with some heavy subject matter, Welsh says she enjoys Rilke’s world and the opportunities it gives her to reflect on those themes. 

“It’s looking at contemporary slavery and thinking about who gets justice within the system. Is everybody equal?

“Reading the newspaper suggests that’s not the case and the novel perhaps reflects some of that as well.”

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The question on everyone’s lips given the success of the sequel is of course whether or not we'll see Rilke again?

“I think at some point I would go back to it. I say that much more easily now than I would have ten years ago.” 

Amanda Mitchison

Amanda Mitchison couldn’t have asked for a better start to her crime-writing career. 

Having already written several children’s works, last year she released The Wolf Hunters set in a violent, dystopian Scotland where a passionate hunter has rewilded his vast Highland estate only for a young man to be killed by a bear on the reserve. 

It’s now been nominated for the debut award at the festival. 

“I wanted to write about hunting in this book and extreme experience and there’s nowhere better for that than Scotland”, Mitchison explains. 

Although she’s hit the ground running, the author admits it wasn’t all plain sailing during the writing process. 

Mitchison laughs as she recalls being taught a lesson in crime writing by Val McDermid. 

She said: “Crime fiction has enormous demands on plot and fiction. You have to have it plotted and planned down to the most minute detail. 

“I went on a course at Moniack Mhor (Scotland’s creative writing centre) and Val McDermid read the beginning of my book. 

“She pointed out a couple of complete howlers. She told me I’d put a 12-foot electric fence in the water so I had to change things and be a lot more specific.”

Whilst Scottish crime writing is widely read, Mitchison still wanted to put her own spin on things. 

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“Some crime books are whodunnits but I would say that my book is more of a ‘why done it’”, she says. 

Asked about being nominated for the debut award, Mitchison said: “I’m chuffed. I’ve been making my way through the other books on the shortlist and I’ve really loved them, all for different reasons.”

Alan Parks

Of all the writers who spoke with The National, none of them are as familiar with their protagonist as Alan Parks. 

His latest Harry McCoy thriller May God Forgive, the fifth in the series, is up for the McIlvanney Prize. 

So what’s it like returning to the same character again? 

“You’re not starting from year zero every time which is quite good but you have to uncover different bits of him,” Parks explains. 

He continued: “He has to grow with each book, he can’t be exactly the same otherwise it just gets a bit dull. 

“His growth has to work within the plot but you discover more about him as things go on and I discover more about things.”

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The atmosphere and tone from the novels is lifted from notebooks full of visual references Parks creates for each story which he finds simply by "wandering around". 

He said: “I used to be a creative director and when a band was signed I would visually represent what they would be like and you used to make a mood board thing.

“Talking about visual things is quite difficult so I think it’s a leftover from that. So when I start writing, I collect pictures and some of them will make their way into the book but others are just an atmosphere thing.

“If you go a bit of astray you can look back at things and find out what the original motivation was for each image.”

The majority of this book was written during Covid, which Parks says ended up having an influence. 

He said: “You could only exercise outside and I ended up at an outdoor class in Royston and the whole book ended up round about that area.

“I’d be exercising away then my eye would catch something interesting.

“There’s always places you want to write about and I like to have it in my mind where people are and where they’re situated.”

Sarah Smith

Sarah Smith, like Mitchison, has been nominated for the festival’s debut prize for her book Hear No Evil. 

The story is “inspired” by a true legal case which tells of a young, deaf woman named Jean who was put on trial in the nineteenth century for allegedly throwing her child into the River Clyde. 

Smith said: “I first came across it when I worked for Deaf Connections which was based in the Gorbals and I was an adult literacy and numeracy tutor.

“I got to know deaf people and I met somebody who had written a history of the organisation and in the first chapter, this case got mentioned.”

There’s a specific reason Smith likes to say that the book is merely “inspired” by the trial rather than directly based on it.

“I tried to find out information about Jean but a lot of the research concentrated, helpfully enough, on the trial but there was very little about the woman so that peaked my interest”, she explained. 

Smith adds: “The book came out of my frustration of not knowing anything about this woman. 

“I wouldn’t have been able to include much about her if it was a non-fiction novel because so much about her is absent from the court records.”