Laidlaw – William McIlvanney

2 Responses to Laidlaw – William McIlvanney

1. Mr Red says:

   March 14, 2020 at 11:53 am

   Famous as the founding novel of Scottish Noir, this was really disappointing. Bog-standard murder mystery, except that unlike proper detective novels, it let the reader know the identity of the murderer from the outset, then followed his story in parallel with the detective’s story, trying but failing to generate suspense as the two stories converged. The trek through one grim, dingy Glasgow watering-hole after another, all of them more or less the same, became rather monotonous in the end. And the homophobic subtext, where the murderer is a young gay man who kills a young heterosexual woman for no understandable reason, was distasteful as well as unconvincing.

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2. Mr Black says:

   March 15, 2020 at 11:00 am

   Gives a gritty sense of Glasgow in the 1970s with some humorous moments, however, it is simply hasn’t stood the test of time and is very dated to the contemporary reader.

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