I’m turning back crime
One of Scotland’s top historians who has written about Robert the Bruce and MacBeth has switched genres to write a crime novel.
Dr Fiona Watson’s murder mystery is set over 700 years ago af ter the Battle of Bannockburn.
The broadcaster told how she wanted to write a historical thr i l ler after stumbling upon a few details in a centuries- old Scottish court record about a young girl who had died.
The ex-senior lecturer in history at Stirling University finished her debut crime novel DarkD Hunter in lockdowndown anda introduced it to an audienceaud at the Bloody ScotlandScotla international crime writing festival. She said : “I f i rst thoughtthou of writing a novelnove years ago, before I becbecame a lecturer. “TheT r e wa s a referencerefe in an 18thcenturycen court book in whichwh a laird was seekingse payment from a tenant for wood for the burial of a girl. It was just a little nugget but you get these all the time and you want to know the story – who was she, how did she die?
“I’ve always been frustrated by not being able to breathe life into the people I was studying but I stored all these little nuggets away.”
Her acclaimed debut is set in 1317 in Berwick-uponTweed.
Three years after Bruce’s triumph at Bannockburn, a young English squire faces a race against time to solve the murder of a young girl and expose a traitor within the city walls as the Scots close in on the last English stronghold in Scotland.
The book – the first in a planned trilogy – highlights the precarious existence of those who lived on the disputed border between the warring nations.
Dr Watson, who has studied the Scottish Wars
of Independence for more than 30 years, said: “We know a bit about what it would have been like to live in a disputed town like Berwick in the 14th century but there are no diaries or newspapers to add colour.
“Then you’ l l spot something in a medieval chronicle and think, ‘Ooh, that’s interesting’. For e x amp l e , t he r e a r e references to dung hi l ls and middens as a source of social discord. On market day the smell in a town would have been overwhelming.”
Whi le some of her characters, including squire Benedict Russel l , are fictional, about half are real.
Dr Watson said: “Many of the characters were real – Sir Edmund, Sir Anthony and others who we know were in Berwick at the time – but we have very little information about them. I’ve had to build their characters from the ground up, which was both challenging and great fun.”
Dr Watson’s other books include Under The Hammer: Edward I And Scotland, Scot land: A Hi s t or y, Macbeth: A True Story, and Traitor, Outlaw, King about Robert the Bruce.
It was just a little nugget get these se but you and nd all the time to you want know their story
Author breathes life into forgotten names