Stuart of Scottish Suspense

Paula Xiberras

I had the delightful, rather than daunting, experience of talking to author Stuart MacBride recently. I say daunting because his books are crime novels of the gritty realistic type and not for the squeamish. It is incongruous that the man that can write such novels is so gentle, quietly spoken and with a great sense of humor (Stuart is keen to show in his books that the detectives are not as grim faced as they are so often portrayed, instead they are human and have fun and joke with their colleagues and team.

Stuart hasn’t been to Australia for 4 years and this time he won’t be able to get to Tasmania, however he recalls a wonderful time he had at a literary event at the Jam factory in Tasmania last time around.

The day we chat he tells me he has an unusual case of jetlag and adjusting to the time zone. He also tells me, laughingly, that he believes the 4 year absence may be because they needed to repair the damage he caused last time he was here before letting him back!

Stuart tells me he was destined to write crime fiction as when he was a youngster he would visit the school library and devour the Hardy Boy novels from cover to cover finally ‘graduating’ in somewhat of a leap to Dashiel Hammet.

Stuart’s love for crime fiction doesn’t extend to the master or rather mistress of the genre in Agatha Christie. He finds something a little unsettling in a delicate lady like Miss Marple outwitting the police who are often portrayed as stupid, and of her ability to sweetly pick out the accused at the end of each novel with the realisation to the reader that she is working in a time when the death penalty was in force. This harshness of penalty and it’s cosy English village setting doesn’t sit well with Stuart.

Stuart is also not keen on programs like CSI, having many friends who are forensic specialists, professional scientists and police who often email him amazed at how the characters on these programs can be portrayed at a crime scene in their polo tops lifting evidence with their contaminated ball point pens that compromise that very evidence.

Stuart is in Australia to promote his new book ‘Close to the Bone’ and an interesting aspect of the book is that there is a novel featured within the book that is being filmed as a movie as part of the story. It is a novel that Stuart himself wants to write one day if he has the time and his editors have told him if he does he will have to use the pseudonym William Hunter, the character he has created in the novel who is the author of the book within the book!

Stuart says crime is not pretty, it’s a nasty business and hence his desire to keep things honest and not sanitise it. Stuart stays true to the meaning of his name that can be translated as ‘guardian’ and ‘household’, for while he explores and brings to life the dark side of humanity by doing so he is the guardian of the household and all that is wholesome.

‘Close to the Bone’ is out now published by Harper Collins.