I love these guys and their mini-vacas. This on in Scottish Highlands
A photo essay of a Elopement in the Scottish Highlands is beautiful.
Crime Fiction in the Scottish Highlands and Islands
Louise Welsh is a Glasgow writer, though her work roams all over Scotland, frequently to Berlin too. Naming the Bones (2010) is one of her most chilling novels set largely in an archaeological dig on the island of Lismore in the Inner Hebrides. Welsh’s writing always has a touch of the Gothic and she captures the windswept lonely nature of the Scottish islands beautifully. I looked for Naming the Bones on Audible but no luck.
This one sounds very familiar to me. I will have to give that some thought - The brilliant His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet, published in 2015. The book is quite remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was a massive success in the UK and published by a small independent Scottish press called Saraband. Secondly, it’s a wonderfully crafted hoax; a psychological thriller masquerading as a slice of true crime. Macrae Burnet presents the reader with a cache of “found” documents relating to a brutal triple murder in 1869 amid a Highlands crofting community and the subsequent arrest of Roderick Macrae. The “found” documents includes Macrae’s memoir written in Inverness jail while awaiting trial. Macrae Burnet claims to have discovered all these documents while researching his own Highland ancestors. It’s revenge tragedy, courtroom drama, and description of the minutiae of Highland life in the nineteenth century. Yes, it’s a gigantic literary hoax, but an un-put-down-able (a most overused term but applicable in this case) and utterly absorbing one. I promise you, you won’t have read too many books like His Bloody Project.
And of course! Anne Cleeves is as well known to TV watchers these days as to her loyal readers thanks to the success of Vera, with Brenda Blethyn as the decidedly unglamorous and dogged Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumberland and City Police, as well as Shetland (with Douglas Henshall). Both have been big hits. Shetland is based on Cleeves’s series of novels featuring Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez. Despite his name Perez is Highlands & Islands through and through (his ancestors were Spanish Armada sailors shipwrecked on the island of Fair Isle—true story). He’s been away working in Glasgow but a murder brings him to Shetland. The Perez series started with Raven Black in 2006 and eight more Perez novels have been published since, most recently Wild Fire (2018). Basically the prolific Cleeves seems to write one Vera novel, then a Perez, and then a Vera, and then a Perez… ]Given that Vera on TV is now in its ninth season while Shetland has just had its fifth season green-lit, it seems she’ll have to remain prolific for a while yet.
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