WOOD AND EVIL
Author reveals unlikely inspiration behind his dark crime novels
Most detective novelists are guided by the novelist greats of the genre but Stuart MacBride’s biggest influence is a dead female comedian.
The 53-year- old said: “Victoria Wood has had the biggest influence on my writing. Leaving aside that it’s funny, it’s the level of skill and craft involved.
“She can take the everyday, the mundane detai ls that nobody would be interested in, and turn it into absolute gold. It’s inspirational. She’s the master of the non sequitur. I love that and do a lot of that in my own writing.”
No one gets beaten on their bottom with a Woman’s Weekly in Stuart’s new book, The Dead Of Winter. But Victoria’s eye for the absurd in the everyday is shot through his 25th novel.
It oopens with a rookie detedetective drivingg a relereleased prisonerr to a vvillage in the CaiCairngorms in a snowstorm.sn It loolooks l ike a VisVisit Scotland advadvert – until he spospots the CCTVV cacameras everr y-ywhwhere.
TThi s i s Glenflenf a rach,rach a village forfo criminals who have finishedisshed theitheir sentences but are too ddangerous to go back to normal life.
Stuart, who lives in the rural nnorth-east, said: “It’s an idea I’ve had fefestering away – people getting out oof prison. They couldn’t go back to lolocal communi t ies because evereverybody knew what they’d done and nobody wanted them.
“WWhat do you do with all those peopeople? Wouldn’t it be much easieasier to stick them all in the samsame place? Then they would be away from the general poppopulation and any potential damdamage is limited.
“YYou get this little community of absolute horror where eveeverybody has to be really nice bebecause it’s a privilege to be in GlenfarGlenfarach. If you are naughty, you have to gog out and cope with the big bad world again.”
It’s a great idea until the village is cut off by a blizzard and there’s a dead body in one of the bungalows.
The young detective is stuck in a freezing Christmas card full of Scotland’s most dangerous criminals. And of course there is no wifi or mobile phone signal. Stuart said he enjoys putting his detectives into impossible situations: “There’s no point throwing your character in at the deep end unless they have breeze blocks tied to their ankles.”
Unl ike some more formulaic detective novelists, Stuart loves to have fun with the genre.
He said: “In most other hands, The Dead Of Winter would have been ‘cosy crime’. It’s Midsummer, a lovely little village surrounded by lovely things but someone has stolen the vicar’s cat.
“In my hands it’s somewhat darker. I won’t name any names but quite a lot of writers hit that patch in their career when it’s just the same book over and over again. The names have changed but you know exactly what’s going to happen because it’s what’s happened in the last book and the book beforebefo that.
“I wouldw much rather forge off in a weird and diffdifferent direction. It proprobably gives my publishlishers terrible anxiety.
“But I just have to hophope readers a re prepprepared to take my hand aand be led into this horrible ddark forest.”
Since his f i rst novel, Cold Granite, was published in 2005, Stuart has written a recurring character, Logan Macrae, who solves crimes in Aberdeen.
Then there’s another series set in the fictional town of Oldcastle, made up so that he could be outrageous in relative safety.
He said: “It’s a fictional city that sits halfway between Dundee and Aberdeen, roundabout Montrose but a bit more inland. If I had set my novel Birthdays For The Dead in Aberdeen, I was going to be sued by the council and nobody from the police would ever talk to me again.”
There’s social commentary woven into the plots of many of his books and the higher-ups do not get an easy time from his detectives doing the heavy lifting. The Dead Of Winter also shows a police service held together with chewing gum and the goodwill of committed officers.
Stuart added: “Over a decade of austerity, eventually you get to the point where things fall apart. This is true of the police service as well as pensions, the NHS, armed forces, fire service, education. If you stop putting the resources in, there will come a point when it will all fall apart.”
I’d much rather forge off in a weird
. It must direction rs publishe give my terrible anxiety