Laidlaw

⚖The case for it

The novel that invented tartan noir, 20 years before Ian Rankin. Glasgow detective Laidlaw hunts a killer across a city McIlvanney renders with novelistic love and sociological precision. McIlvanney was a literary novelist who wrote crime fiction; this book works as both great detective novel and great novel about Scotland. Rankin has called him the godfather of the genre.

— the canon

✕The case against

Laidlaw keeps Camus and Kierkegaard in his desk drawer, and McIlvanney makes sure every chapter reminds you. The detective speaks in aphorisms no working polisman ever produced, the killer is known from the opening pages (so suspense is off the table), and the women exist to grieve or tempt. Tartan noir's founding text, with the founder's overwriting included.

— the honest librarian