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Newsroom
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
Book of the Week: How to kill everyone in Scotland
It just so happens that the two best New Zealand novels of the year so far are both set in Britain, with Cambridge writer Catherine Chidgey imagining sinister goings-on in a village in England in her novel The Book of Guilt, and now Dunedin writer Liam McIlvanney happily killing off characters in a pretty seaside town in Scotland in his very, very good crime thriller, The Good Father. I suppose the accumulated bodycount in Chidgey's book is greater than in McIlvanney's novel but she sets her novel over 40 years, giving her a long time to send her characters to their deaths, and The Good Father is restricted to seven years. Even so, he gives it a good lash. You want murders, you've come to the right place. McIlvanney is chair of Scottish studies at the University of Otago. Right now he is on a book tour of Scotland, celebrating the very welcome news last week that The Good Father will be made into a TV drama series in Britain. Aye, I'll be wanting to watch that. I may already know how the story develops and what happens in the bloody end but I'll want to see the ways actors take on their roles—particularly Rory, a little boy who goes missing—and I'll really want to see what the town looks like. The book is set in Fairlie. Not our Fairlie, in the Mackenzie Basin of the South Island, which I am guessing is named after Fairlie in Scotland. It's got a beach. It's got peculiar houses lining the shore. McIlvanney describes it with a kind of atmospheric dread in The Good Father. It's a book of two halves. Almost nothing happens in the first half which is to say a family is left with nothing after their son, Rory, goes missing. There are very few clues. There are even fewer suspects. The story is narrated by Rory's dad, Gordon, an English professor. He and his wife Sarah are shattered and helpless and inert. 'People talk of grief as a numbness. With me it was more like vertigo. I felt permanently dizzy…Who took him? Where has he gone? Is he safe? Is he still alive? The questions wheeled like vultures in the sun.' Grief is like a sickness, and McIlvanney leans close towards the suffering. He writes of Rory's disappearance without sentiment, and it's heartbreaking. I suppose it makes sense that Gordon, because of his academic profession, would connect with great literature as he tries to make sense of Rory being there one minute and spirited away the next. 'Of all things, I thought about 'The Purloined Letter', Poe's short story where the massed ranks of the gendarme dismantle the minister's Paris apartment, searching for the stolen letter…Maybe, I thought, the police haven't exhausted every angle, chased down every lead.' That was fair, and I also accepted Gordon telling his university class, 'The challenge, then, for crime writers is to represent the gravity – in both senses of the word – of murder. The seriousness. The weight. What it really means to kill someone.' But McIlvanney doesn't leave it at that, and things get kind of meta as he expands on the tricks and methods of crime fiction. The Good Father is about the story of a missing boy. You want the tension and awfulness of the situation as it unfolds in Fairlie; you don't want the author intruding, and getting in the way. You want to read about Fairlie. 'White triangles of sail on the darkening firth.' McIlvanney is so good at place; the setting is visible, you can feel it and smell it. His dialogue is sharp and well-formed, and he's alert to patterns of speech. 'Hell mend him,' says one character; another describes a hard drinker, 'He was putting it away like a man with three arms.' There's a visit to Aberdeen and a visit to a town in Cork. But the plot doesn't actually thicken; McIlvanney keeps a tight rein on things, never overplays his hand. There is no body, and a strong possibility that Rory was abducted, but his continued absence means the plot keeps thinning out, leaves Gordon and Sarah empty-handed, chasing shadows and phantoms. All of Part 1 of The Good Father is expertly told. Part 2 is where the violence finally erupts. Something amazing happens, and things get even worse. The book takes on a darker tone and Gordon faces a stern moral test. He fails that test. There are four deaths. The first two are a misfortune but the others are more like a carelessness. Crime fiction depends on a final hurdle, and I'm not sure whether The Good Father takes it in its stride or crashes into it. McIlvanney seems to share the same credo as Eleanor Catton, when she approached the final hurdle of her novel Birnam Wood: kill everyone in sight. Still, the deaths are efficient, and skilful, especially the last murder: 'The knife slithered crisply through the meat of him. The hilt clipped a rib…His mouth yawed open; blood poured brilliantly out.' The victim died 'like a dog'. I'd feel sorry for a dog. I didn't feel much for this guy but neither did I obtain any kind of satisfaction from his death. Things had gone too far. McIlvanney is adept at killing the most precious thing in our lives—hope—but perhaps got a bit too enthusiastic at the prospect of an all-out slaughter. It gave improbability to The Good Father. It's one thing to build the tension but it's another challenge to release it. But the heart of the novel beats strong and clear. 'You think that families are held together by love,' Gordon tells us. 'That's not true. They're held together by secrets.' There is actually a fifth death in The Good Father. It's not a violent death. It takes place almost at the edges of this very good read, with its captivating scenery of Fairlie and its little note to the author's adopted country (New Zealand is pointed out on a globe as a 'long, slim country, italic-shaped'). It sends a message: good riddance to bad fathers. The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre, $36.99) is available in bookstores nationwide
Otago Daily Times
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Book ‘in very good hands' for adaptation
Dunedin author and University of Otago Stuart Professor of Scottish studies Liam McIlvanney's latest book The Good Father may soon be turned into a television series. PHOTO: GERARD O'BRIEN What could be worse than your child disappearing? It is a recurring question in Dunedin author Liam McIlvanney's latest book The Good Father, and one that has lured a Bafta award-winning television production company to secure the screen rights to the thriller. The University of Otago Stuart Professor of Scottish studies said he was delighted his book had been optioned by Glasgow-based production company Synchronicity Films. "I'm a big fan of their work. "Their recent production of Andrew O'Hagan's Mayflies was superb. "They have also adapted The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Kiwi novelist Heather Morris and did a brilliant job there. "My book is in very good hands. They are good people as well as top professionals, so I'm thrilled to be working with them." Prof McIlvanney said it was the second time one of his novels had been optioned by a production company. His third novel The Quaker was also optioned in 2018, but it had not yet been translated for screen. The Good Father was about a couple who live an idyllic life in the seaside village of Fairlie, on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland. The beachside village of Fairlie, on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland. PHOTO: SUPPLIED Billed as "gripping and emotionally charged", the story explores the devastating impact of trauma, family secrets and community suspicion when the couple's 7-year-old child goes missing from the beach outside the family's home. "The novel takes a deep emotional dive into the aftermath of the disappearance, and then a couple of dramatic twists lead the father down a path he could barely have imagined at the story's outset." It twists and flits around the question: what could be worse than your child disappearing? "The book has a pretty clear structure and some strong characters, and the setting is pretty photogenic, so I think it will translate well to screen," he said. Despite being the author of the book, he would have very little to do with the production itself. "I'm very happy to leave it to the professionals. "Jacquelin Perske is a phenomenal screenwriter and I'm really excited to see what she does with the novel and where she takes it with her own artistic vision." Synchronicity Films founder and creative director Claire Mundell said the company loved "a brilliant thriller" and Prof McIlvanney's novel "hooked" them from page one. "He's the Scottish Stephen King. "The Good Father is deeply suspenseful and propulsive, whilst asking complex moral and emotional questions: qualities that align perfectly with Synchronicity's passion for adapting bold, compelling and emotionally resonant stories." Prof McIlvanney was a little uncomfortable with the reference to him being "the Scottish Stephen King". "I take that with a pinch of salt. "I don't think I can really claim any comparison with the great Stephen King. "We both write books and we both have an 'i' in our surnames, but that's about it." As for when he thought the production might hit our television screens, he said he had no idea. "That's above my pay grade."
The Herald Scotland
20-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Why Fairlie was the perfect inspiration for a crime novel
'We were living in Fairlie for six months in 2018,' says the New Zealand-based crime writer, of the day inspiration blew in off the Firth of Clyde. 'It's an idyllic setting, it feels like a very safe place, enclosed by hills, a beach sheltered by Cumbrae, one street. A little enclosed space, insulated from the cares of the world. 'So naturally the first thing a crime writer thinks is 'what if something went catastrophically wrong in an idyllic place like this?' It was an idea that knocked on the door and demanded to be written.' McIlvanney had made good pace on the third installment of his DI Duncan McCormack series, following the travails of the gay, shinty-playing cop from Ballachulish, familiar to readers of his 2018's The Quaker and 2022's The Heretic. Yet when the idea for a story about the worst thing that can happen to a young family began to form during his time on the Clyde riviera, McCormack went back into a drawer. 'A lot of times as a writer it's not the book you're writing, but the book you're writing next that is the book that really excites you,' says McIlvanney, speaking to The Herald from his home in New Zealand, days before flying home for a book tour. 'The logical thing to do is the next Duncan McCormack novel, but sometimes something else comes along that feels more urgent, and if something wants to be written then you should probably listen. It's nice to have an idea that you're enthusiastic about. You have a better chance of the reader being enthusiastic about what you're writing about.' What lay at the other side of the door was The Good Father, a story about a couple whose seven year old son vanishes into thin Ayrshire air while walking his dog on Fairlie beach. As well as a prize winning novelist, Professor of Scottish Studies at the University of Otago, and married father of four, Kilmarnock's McIlvanney is, of course, the son of legendary Scottish crime writer William, who died in 2015. It's perhaps too easy a reach to suggest that the book's title is laden with enough resonance to echo into the submarine trenches off Fairlie's coast. (Image: Liam McIlvanney) The plot swings through on the actions of numerous fathers. You wouldn't need to be a family friend to suppose parallels with at least two of them: the central protagonist's dad (famous, broken marriage, buried from Glasgow University chapel) and the protagonist himself (Ayrshire-raised university academic, family man). It all seems so familiar that I absent-mindedly call McIlvanney 'you' when recalling a passage about the central character's late night encounter at the end of a pier. 'Incidents in your life creep in in different forms,' he says. 'There's not a 1-1 correspondence between your life and the things you write in a novel. There are elements of my old man in that character, but also elements of literary characters, those overlearning characters in Scottish literature like John Guthrie is Sunset Song and John Gourlay in House with the Green Shutters. 'You have that and you have elements that you make up in relation to characters. And there's always an element of me in those characters. They're an amalgam of different components. 'I used to find it difficult to read my old man's novels as straightforward novels. I would decode things about them - this character is a certain person in real life. And they are, but they aren't. They're fictional characters, alchemised, transmogrified into something different even if you can trace a line to a person in real life. It's inevitable in fiction, you can have a bit of fun with them.' A decade on from his dad's death, McIlvanney - who will run a 22 date book tour - is candid in his recollections of their relationship. Godfather of Tartan Noir he might have been, but McIlvanney Snr was never presented with Jnr's manuscripts. He says: 'It might have been quite short-sighted in some ways. I don't know. I'm not sure why I didn't avail myself of his expertise. I think I just wanted to see if I could make a go of it without doing that. 'We spoke about things like football and politics, we didn't spend a lot of time talking about writing. He was also a reticent figure in that respect. I have no idea what he thought of the books.' The critics, on the other hand, approve. McIlvanney won the 2018 Scottish Crime Book of the Year for The Quaker at the Bloody Sunday festival. On the face of it, The Good Father would appear to be a one-off, but, McIlvanney jokes, his previous two series - one featuring a journalist, the other the aforementioned cop - are 'two book trilogies' in a line pinched from Greenock-born Hollywood author turned screenwriter Alan Sharp. He'll return Down Under after the summer to continue working on a ghost story. And there are 10,000 words of a start on Duncan McCormack's calling out from a drawer in a desk in New Zealand. 'I have great admiration for people like Lee Childs who can write all those Jack Reacher books, but I couldn't write 20 books about the same character. I need to change things up, says McIlvanney. 'Anyway I'm too slow. I'd be 140 before I was 20 books in.'
Rhyl Journal
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Author Liam McIlvanney longlisted for book prize named after his father
Lin Anderson and Alan Parks are also on the 13-strong longlist for the 2025 McIlvanney Prize which was unveiled by the Bloody Scotland festival on Tuesday. The writing duo Ambrose Parry, consisting of Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, also makes the longlist. The accolade recognises excellence in Scottish crime writing and is named in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the godfather of tartan noir. The list features five authors who organisers say got their first big break when they were shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Callum McSorley was shortlisted for the debut prize in 2023 when he went on to win the main McIlvanney prize, while Tariq Ashkanani and Allan Gaw have both won the debut prize – in 2022 and 2024 respectively. Heather Critchlow and Daniel Aubrey have both previously been shortlisted for the debut prize. Festival director Bob McDevitt said: 'Supporting new writers is at the heart of Bloody Scotland and it is great to see so many authors graduating from the debut shortlist to the main prize and slugging it out with more established names. 'I'm glad I don't have to pick a winner from this excellent crop of crime novels.' The winner of the prize will be announced on the opening night of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling on September 12. The longlist was chosen by a panel of booksellers, librarians, broadcasters and bloggers. DV Bishop, who originally won Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland in 2018, is one of only two authors who appears on the longlist for the second year in a row. Douglas Skelton, who has now been longlisted for the prize six times, also appeared on the longlist last year. – Works and authors named on the longlist Whispers of the Dead by Lin Anderson The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani The Dying Light by Daniel Aubrey Carnival of Lies by DV Bishop Unsound by Heather Critchlow The Moon's More Feeble Fire by Allan Gaw The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney Paperboy by Callum McSorley The Good Liar by Denise Mina Gunner by Alan Parks Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry Midnight and Blue by Sir Ian Rankin A Thief's Blood by Douglas Skelton
North Wales Chronicle
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Chronicle
Author Liam McIlvanney longlisted for book prize named after his father
Lin Anderson and Alan Parks are also on the 13-strong longlist for the 2025 McIlvanney Prize which was unveiled by the Bloody Scotland festival on Tuesday. The writing duo Ambrose Parry, consisting of Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, also makes the longlist. The accolade recognises excellence in Scottish crime writing and is named in memory of William McIlvanney, often described as the godfather of tartan noir. The list features five authors who organisers say got their first big break when they were shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. Callum McSorley was shortlisted for the debut prize in 2023 when he went on to win the main McIlvanney prize, while Tariq Ashkanani and Allan Gaw have both won the debut prize – in 2022 and 2024 respectively. Heather Critchlow and Daniel Aubrey have both previously been shortlisted for the debut prize. Festival director Bob McDevitt said: 'Supporting new writers is at the heart of Bloody Scotland and it is great to see so many authors graduating from the debut shortlist to the main prize and slugging it out with more established names. 'I'm glad I don't have to pick a winner from this excellent crop of crime novels.' The winner of the prize will be announced on the opening night of the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling on September 12. The longlist was chosen by a panel of booksellers, librarians, broadcasters and bloggers. DV Bishop, who originally won Pitch Perfect at Bloody Scotland in 2018, is one of only two authors who appears on the longlist for the second year in a row. Douglas Skelton, who has now been longlisted for the prize six times, also appeared on the longlist last year. – Works and authors named on the longlist Whispers of the Dead by Lin Anderson The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani The Dying Light by Daniel Aubrey Carnival of Lies by DV Bishop Unsound by Heather Critchlow The Moon's More Feeble Fire by Allan Gaw The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney Paperboy by Callum McSorley The Good Liar by Denise Mina Gunner by Alan Parks Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry Midnight and Blue by Sir Ian Rankin A Thief's Blood by Douglas Skelton
