For the latest SWH! podcast Ali spoke to writer Alan Parks about his latest Harry McCoy thriller, Bobby March Will Live Forever. The two discuss the world of Harry McCoy and those who share it, the importance of returning characters, why he set the novels in 1970s Glasgow, the city’s complex relationship with crime and its criminals, the inspirations for Bobby March, and why he is unlikely to write a novel based in the music business. The Harry McCoy novels are among the most

It can be difficult for a writer to make their mark in the crowded, thriving, marketplace that is Scottish crime fiction. Tartan Noir, as it has become know, is a national literary phenomenon with Bloody Scotland, the international crime festival, now one of the country’s biggest and most eagerly anticipated annual book events. As a result there are many writers, both new and established, turning their hand to crime (you can insert your own gag), but someone who made an immed

The Glasgow crime novel has a rich, varied and celebrated tradition. Many would cite William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw as the first true classic of the genre, but before that you have to consider the phenomenal success and notoriety of No Mean City, Herbert Kingsley Long and Alexander McArthur’s 1935 novel which did more than any other to shape and colour the notion, for a generation of readers, of the city as a place where razor gangs ruled. However, even before that classic nove

There is an argument which you may have heard, possibly on these pages, that while James Kelman is one of the finest novelists around today, the format which suits his writing best is the short story. Kelman’s narratives are not about plot, they are snapshots of people’s everyday lives; lives which have been going on before we become involved, and which will continue once we have moved on, and that seems to work best in short, sharp bursts – fleeting, like thoughts themselves

The latest podcast is a fascinating conversation with two previous guests, the writer and artist, Alasdair Gray, and the driving force behind Songs For Scotland, Kevin Brown, Kevin is curating ALASDAIR GRAY’s Life in Pictures: the Exhibition. Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 1951 – 2017 (27 July 2017 – 12 August 2017), which will feature a selection of Alasdair’s art at London’s Coningsby Gallery, and he tells us all about the what, why, when and where’s. Alasdair discusses at