Only twelve works are on my best list this year; eight by women, four by men. Five were in translation – plus two more if you count Elif Shafak.

Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness

The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

The Photograph by Penelope Lively

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Shanghai Nights by Juan Marsé

The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

34 Scottish books this year, 17 by men, 17 by women. Five were fantasy or SF, one was non-fiction.

(For my reviews type the book title into my search box.)

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Greenmantle by John Buchan

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

The Wind That Shakes the Barley by James Barke

The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid

Guy Mannering by Walter Scott

Olivia by O Douglas

Poor Angus by Robin Jenkins

Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett

Born Leader by J T McIntosh

Nothing Left to Fear From Hell by Alan Warner

The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance

Poor Tom by Edwin Muir

Rizzio by Denise Mina

Dark Crescent by Lyndsey Croal

The Hayburn Family by Guy McCrone

The Takeover by Muriel Spark

Columba’s Bones by David Greig

The Keelie Hawk by Kathleen Jamie

The Song in the Green Thorn Tree by James Barke

Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan

Black Sparta by Naomi Mitchison

Life for a Life by T F Muir

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

Dead Catch by T F Muir

Some Kind of Grace by Robin Jenkins

The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

The Green Isle of the Great Deep by Neil M Gunn

To See Ourselves by Alistair Moffat

The Setons by O Douglas

Auld Licht Idylls by J M Barrie

Gliff by Ali Smith

The Wonder of All the Gay World by James Barke  (review still to appear here.)

Hodder and Stoughton, (this Uniform Edition of Barrie’s works was published between 1928 and 1931,) 243 p. First published in 1888.

This is one of Barrie’s first books and it sits firmly within the Scottish literature tradition in that it looks back on times past and things lost.

Our (unnamed) narrator is the schoolmaster in Thrums, a small village in rural Scotland inhabited mainly by weavers. He describes many of the characters and legendary tales of Thrums and its surrounding area. Only one chapter is from another viewpoint, that of Davit Lunan, who relates his memories of the General Election of 1832.

As a picture of life in the Scotland of the early and mid-nineteenth century this is a valuable historical account. Incidents are varied and illustrative.

Most of the inhabitants of Thrums were Auld Licht adherents, those who preferred the old, extremely strict, church teachings and beliefs. (This is in contrast to the New Lichts, whose beliefs were merely very strict.) There were also some political differences between the two schools of thought. The narrator tells us Auld Lichts were “creatures of habit who never thought of smiling on a Monday.”  (Did they think of smiling at all?)

However, the tales are not without humour. A prospective Minister was giving a favourable impression with his preaching and hence likely to be appointed until a chance gust of wind blew a set of papers from the pulpit thus showing he had been committing the unpardonable affront of reading his sermon. His sin was compounded by the fact he had hidden the offending pages in his Bible.

One husband had lacked the knack of managing women. His wife left him for the house across the wynd but he then, as if she was dead, organised a last wake for her, setting out the customary tables in the street. This so put the wind up her she returned to him.

Another worthy, Bowie, was once heard to say, “‘I am of opeenion that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency. I have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion.’”

Though I had visited the house in Kirriemuir where he grew up, and seen his grave in the town cemetery, hitherto all I had known of Barrie’s work was that he was the progenitor of Peter Pan, the royalties from which he left to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Encouraged by reading this one there are two more books in the Thrums trilogy which I will get round to.

Pedant’s corner:- shrunk (shrank – used later,) sprung (sprang,) Shakspeare for Shakespeare (x 2.)

Hodder and Stoughton, 1917, 317 p.

The Setons are a family living in pre-Great War Glasgow. Mr Seton is a minister given to ex tempore sermons, especially good on St Paul.  The focus of the book is more on his daughter, Elizabeth, though, who has effectively been in charge of the household since her mother died.

Curiously, however, the book starts in the home of the Thomsons, who are having an at home to which Elizabeth has been invited. During the conversations we learn Mr Seton’s parish is in a poorer area of the city (later revealed to be the Gorbals) and his congregation is devoted to him, as he is to them. Thereafter we don’t see much of the Thomsons at all.

When not occupied with household matters Elizabeth makes house calls on parishioners in order to collect for the Zenana Mission.

Nothing much happens in the book apart from conversation. At one point Mr Seton says Scots are, “a mixture of hard-headedness and romance, common sense and sentiment, practicality and poetry, business and idealism.” Elizabeth adds, “We have a queer daftness in our blood. We pretend to be dour and cautious, but the fact is that at heart we are the most emotional and sentimental people on Earth.”

A man called John Jamieson opines that, of all Scotland’s historical figures, rather than Walter Scott it is Robert Burns whose words are most often in our memories, Burns whom Scots regard with most sympathy and affection. And why? Because of his humanity, his rich humour and riotous imagination. In a word, his daftness.

One character says Edinburgh’s suburbs comprise, “Rows and rows of smug, well-built houses, each with a front garden, each with a front gate, and each front gate remains closed, shut against the casual caller until you have rung a bell.” By contrast, “Glasgow doesn’t keep visitors at the gate. Glasgow is on the doorstep to welcome them in.”

Promise of plot comes when Elizabeth’s Aunt, Mr Seton’s sister, who lives in London, asks the Setons to put up her husband’s nephew, the monocled Mr Arthur Townshend, for a short visit. (The monocle is not an affectation but is required due to an eye condition.) He leaves on completion of his visit with nothing of substance having occurred.

It is then the book takes an unexpected swing into more serious areas, as it takes up again in 1917 (by which time Mr Seton has had to retire for health reasons) and of course the War is prominent in everyone’s lives, with Arthur Townshend in the Army. They are sustained by the religious sentiment, familiar from the metric version of the Twenty-third Psalm, that goodness and mercy shall follow their every step.

Pedant’s corner:- “pine-apple” (nowadays ‘pineapple’,) souffle (soufflé,) d’oyley (more commonly spelled ‘doily’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “the two Miss Hendrys” (the two Misses Hendry. On the next page we had ‘the Misses Simpson’, so why the difference?) dropp d (dropped,) dryly (nowadays ‘drily’,) Sindbad (ie the sailor; nowadays spelled Sinbad,) “good heart d (good-hearted,) clo ing (closing,) sausage-roll (sausage roll,) “a criminal about to be hung” (OK it was in dialogue but it should still be ‘hanged’,) putties (puttees.)

Polygon, 2006, 276 p, plus 5p Foreword by Diarmid Gunn. First published 1944.

In this book we return to the pairing of Young Art and Old Hector from a novel which I read in 2016.

After a night where the adults of Clachdrum talk about ongoing events in Hitler’s Germany and the terrifying thought that your mind could be broken, the pair go on a fishing expedition.

While attempting to catch a salmon they fall into the pool and apparently drown, waking up in another world, the Green Isle of the Great Deep of the title. This is a place which is recognisably Scottish rural, but with variations. A watcher tells them to travel to the Seat of the Rock and warned only to stay at the Inns along the way.

The land is fertile and fruit abundant but they are warned not to eat it, only to eat at the inns. However, Art is fractious, does not want to stay at the inns and eats the fruit, with no ill effects.

There are, of course, biblical connotations to this, but also questions of free will. On the Green Isle, life is regimented – an allegory of Nazi Germany, true, (there is talk of expansion into other lands,) but equally applicable to the feudally circumscribed life of the Highlands.

While Art makes the most of his ability to roam, escaping the clutches of the authorities Hector falls into their sway. He finds that fruit was forbidden “so that man would be restored to his original innocence,” be without blemish, the perfect worker, do all things he was told to do, all to ensure perpetual order. Hector is told “obedience is the highest of virtues.”

Art is sought out by the Hunt but continues to evade his pursuers, which leads to doubts spreading at the Seat.

There are echoes in the novel of George MacDonald’s Phantastes (though Gunn is much the better writer) and similarities to Gunn’s later novel The Well at the World’s End.

Many of Scottish fiction’s dealings with the fantastic feature meetings with the Devil. The Green Isle of the Great Deep is different in that here Hector demands from the Seat a meeting with God – and gets it. This gives Gunn the opportunity to philosophise about totalitarianism and freedom, knowledge and wisdom, thinking and feeling and the necessity for governance to be tempered by wise counsel, armed with which Hector and Art can return to life in Clachdrum.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, focused (focused,) “spoke to her husband an pointed to” (and pointed to,) “their bodies quivered and shrunk” (and shrank,) ogam (now spelled ogham.)

Cassell, 1971, 525 p.

The fifth of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, featuring the life and exploits of Francis Crawford of Lymond, Duc de Sevigny.

Having killed his adversary Graham Reid Malett in the last instalment, Pawn in Frankincense, while Ambassador of France to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent in Ottoman Turkey, Lymond, with the aid of his mistress Güzel, has now travelled to Moscow to find employment for his company of mercenaries under Prince Ivan Vasilievich, the Tsar of All Russia (known in English as Ivan the Terrible, but never named as such in the text.)

There is first, though, a focus on the activities of young Philippa Somerville, who had travelled to Turkey to help retrieve Lymond’s illegitimate son from Mallet’s clutches and who, after spending time in the Sultan’s seraglio (somewhat improbably without suffering any undue attentions) had, at his insistence, contracted a paper – and unconsummated – marriage with Lymond in order to protect her reputation. Philippa brought the child, known as Kuzum, to Lymond’s home of Culter in Scotland but now has a position as a lady in waiting to Queen Mary in England. Intrigued by Lymond’s family’s reticence about his origins she has been inquiring into his background and obtained two differing accounts of his actual parentage.

In Moscow, Lymond soon becomes the Tsar’s right-hand man, the Voevoda Bolshoia, and sets about modernising the army. All this is put in jeopardy when the Tsar decides to send an envoy, Osep Nepeja, to England to purchase modern armaments and supplies, tasking Lymond with securing these.

Behind the scenes machinations of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, (a granddaughter of Henry VIII and mother of Lord Darnley) are a threat to Lymond through all this.

When Lymond states his firm intention of returning to Russia, Guthrie, a member of his company says of the Russians, “They are a nation accustomed to violent, unreasoning rule, and when it yokes them again, they have no instinct to withstand it, to beat it down and to replace it with sanity.” To which Lymond replies that given time that change could be achieved. We’re still waiting.

It’s all very well researched and incident packed but there is an opacity to proceedings. Dunnett withholds certain information from the reader somewhat unfairly and there is often a lack of clarity to the dialogue.

However, only one instalment, Checkmate, remains unread by me.

Pedant’s corner:-  mortised (morticed,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech. “The crowd were already pressing into the warehouse” (The crowd was already pressing…,) reindeers (the plural of reindeer is  reindeer,) gutteral (guttural,) complajnts (complaints,) Kholgomory (elsewhere always Kholmogory,) “Turkey will not always remain the power; that she has been the secular power of the Pope is also in question” (the semicolon is misplaced ‘Turkey will not always remain the power that she has been;  the secular power of the Pope is also in question’.) “‘Right?’ said Lymon .” (‘“Right?” said Lymond.’) cracklure (craquelure.) “‘I thought we could surrounded the Tsar with’” (could surround the Tsar.)

Polygon, 2004, 230 p, plus 4 p Introduction by James Meek. First published 1960.

Like Dust on the Paw, this is a fruit of the author’s time in Afghanistan, and paints a portrait of the country in the late 1950s, some of its people yearning for modernity but with pockets of utter poverty in its most rural areas.

Our viewpoint character is a Scotsman only ever named as McLeod, a diplomat between posts, returned to Afghanistan after a time away. In his previous term there he had formed an attachment to Karima, an Afghan woman he had thought to marry. However, he did not own the many thousands of sheep her father deemed necessary in a prospective son-in-law.

He is interested in the fate of a former friend, Donald Kemp, who has gone missing along with his female companion, Margaret Duncan. The authorities are anxious to convince him they were both murdered: indeed, a village has been punished for the crime, with two of its men in jail in the city awaiting execution. McLeod has his doubts and, against the wishes both of the authorities and the diplomats sets out to see whether the pair are still alive. In the village concerned he finds, “as everywhere in this country, a mixture of pathos and sinisterness.”

A local Commandant confides in him and in their conversation compares the Bible and the Koran. “‘Everything is in it that suits you. If you wish to kill your enemy, search through the pages, and you will find sanction. If you wish to forgive him and love him like a brother you will find sanction for that too. A man takes his choice of what God advises.’”

About the human condition McLeod thinks, “No wonder the Koran and the Bible, advising human beings, had to give such contradictory advice.”

Despite being set in Afghanistan this is unmistakably a Scottish novel. On the journey McLeod’s thoughts compare the landscape to parts of Scotland such as Edinburgh Castle and the mountains of Wester Ross, he thinks of a local headman as glaikit, hears a voice call to him in Gaelic, and also remembers Margaret Duncan’s parents referring to the bad fire.

Yet its conclusions and themes are universal.

(There are occasional references reflecting the times it was written, one boy at a school is “slant-eyed,” another “hooknosed, Semitic.”)

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Jenkins’ (x 3, Jenkins’s.) Otherwise: brief-cases (briefcases,) basket-ball (x 2, basketball,) Chiang Kaishek (usually written Chiang Kai Shek,) “he had to breath …. through his mouth” (breathe,) “hair-pin bends” (hairpin.)

Robinson, 2019, 377 p.

Following on from Life For a Life I would most likely never have looked at this, crime fiction not really being my thing, except that  the good lady had borrowed it from the local library so I thought I might as well.

A fishing boat washed up on Tentsmuir beach is found to contain a body restrained by wire in such a way that any movement would have resulted in a slow death. The boat belonged to Joe Christie who had disappeared – along with the boat – several years ago. The victim isn’t Christie though but Stooky Dee, an alleged associate of big Jock Shepherd, Scotland’s criminal kingpin. Muir makes much use of italicising alleged in the book in relation to Shepherd’s activities. DCI Andy Gilchrist, based in St Andrews, investigates the case.

Gilchrist has problems with his adult children and difficulties with the forensic pathologist Dr Rebecca Cooper whose brief liaison she cut off when she decided to reconcile with her husband. These attempts to humanise our hero are something of a distraction from the main plot. There is a nice moment, though, when Gilchrist tells his daughter when she says he knows how to talk to women as if he knows what they’re thinking, “No man knows what any woman is thinking.”

It soon turns out others of Shepherd’s henchmen, Cutter Boyd and Hatchet McBirn, have been killed recently but it seems the police in Strathclyde, Shepherd’s main area of operations, do not want Gilchrist muscling in on the case.

Further complications arise from Gilchrist’s DS Jessie Janes’s brother Tommy – on the run accused of murder, though Jessie doesn’t think he did it – contacting her about information he wants to give her.

All is mixed up with a big drug deal the Strathclyde force – along with HM Government – is hoping will lead to the arrests of major dealers, for which they send DI Fox, a supercilious creature to retrieve the case files from Fife.

Things become a bit too conspiracy laden when Gilchrist and (Jessie) Janes are tied up in a lock-up garage in Anstruther before a shoot-out resolves their problem.

This book confirmed that modern crime fiction is not for me. I doubt I’ll sample Muir’s work again. (It’s also enough to give anyone an aversion to visiting Fife.)

Pedant’s corner:- “to go back onboard” (back on board,) “a dumpster” (not a UK term. Muir’s sojourn in the US has got to him. We say ‘skip’, or [maybe] ‘wheelie-bin’,) “as if everyone …. were indoors” (as if everyone  … was indoors,) “driven to the scrappies and dumped” (not a plural; a possessive: ‘to the scrappy’s’.) “Capisci?” (it’s spelled ‘Capisce’,) “right from the get-go” (‘right from the start’; please,) “when the caller finally gave out” (gave up,) “that all was not well” (that not all was well.)

Little Brown, 2016, 440 p.

In this (fourth) instalment of the cases of DCI Karen Pirie she is still trying to get over the death of her romantic (and former professional) partner Phil Paratka, murdered in the line of duty in The Skeleton Road. Unable to sleep properly she strolls the backways of Edinburgh at night, particularly the Restalrig railway path.

We start, though, with Ross Garvie, a joyriding teenager, whose exploits lead to him killing his three passengers in a crash and only surviving himself in a deep coma.

Then we meet (briefly) Gabriel Abbott, an obsessive about exploitation in the third world unburdening his worries about a Thai correspondent of his to a friend in a pub in Kinross.

Garvie’s DNA provides a familial hit to the murder of Tina MacDonald in Glasgow years before, thus giving Pirie’s cold case unit a lead, but complicated by the fact Garvie was adopted and accessing the original birth certificate is all but legally forbidden.

Then Abbott is found murdered on the path by Loch Leven from Kinross. It turns out his mother was killed by a bomb on a light aircraft years before – an atrocity blamed at the time on the IRA despite the crude MO not being a fit. Pirie does not believe in such coincidences but the local officer has dismissed Abbott’s death as a suicide.

Cue much treading on toes as Pirie sets out to solve both cases and the aircraft bombing, ignoring protocol as is her wont.

A sub-plot involving Syrian refugees she meets on the railway path who have nowhere they can meet up manages to entwine with the main one near the end.

I suppose this is pretty standard police procedural (or in Pirie’s case non-procedural) fare but McDermid keeps the pages turning.

Pedant’s corner:-  “none of them were worried” (none of them was worried,) “Lees’ reward” (Lees’s reward,) “macaroon bars made traditionally with icing sugar and mashed potatoes” (McDermid is here misrepresenting for comic effect, macaroon bars are not made from mashed potato,) congratulations for the subscripts in H₂O and H₂SO₄, “where the leak sprung from” (sprang from.) “Noble shook head” (shook his head,) snuck (horrible USianism; ‘sneaked’, please.)

Constable, 2013, 394 p. First published 2007.

There is a certain sameness to modern crime fiction; which is to say modern detective fiction. Gone are the days of the gentleman sleuth such as Poirot or Wimsey, and the even more gentle woman, Miss Marple, solving crimes almost at leisure and in relatively salubrious surroundings. Now we have the hard-bitten, hardened police detective dealing with contemporary (well, in this case twelve years old) psychopathic criminality in all its grisly detail.

I would not normally have read this but it is set almost exclusively in Fife, where I live, (with such familiar locations as Boarhills, Kingsbarns, Crail and St Andrews,) and was recommended by our nearest local librarian as an introduction to the author prior to his visit to the library this November. Suitably enough it was published by Constable.

The short Chapter One features a young woman fleeing from a brutal captivity along a Fife coastal path on a freezing night. That is the last time we are given her point of view. It is her body DCI Andy Gilchrist, a widower, and his new DS Jessica (Jessie) Janes, are called to investigate a few days later, dead from a blow to the head, possibly after a fall from the path, and subsequent exposure. They trace her back to a cottage in Kingsbarns where they find two more young women dead, decapitated, and evidence of enslavement into prostitution.

Janes has a sideline in stand-up comedy which she undertakes to try out jokes written by her deaf son, Robert. Her mother has a criminal record but is a constant thorn in her side trying to gain legal access to Robert.  Gilchrist and the forensic pathologist Dr Rebecca Cooper have a mutual attraction complicated by the fact that she is married to someone else (albeit not happily). One of the other female detectives has a problematic relationship with a man who turns out to be unknowingly involved in the case, another has a booze problem.

I thought Janes’s background as teased out by Gilchrist in their conversations and his investigations into her mother’s origins would have made it unlikely for her ever to have been accepted into the police but maybe their standards aren’t too high these days.

This is pretty much the standard police procedural offering but some of the details were perhaps unnecessarily gruesome (of course this may be what the crime fiction market now demands) and there was a cliffhanger scene which stretched credulity by being kept going too long.

On putting this book onto my Library Thing account I found this was actually DC Gilchrist’s fourth appearance in print. I may try one more to confirm my thoughts that it’s not really my thing.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Acknowledgements “whne” (when.) Otherwise; “change in tack” (x 3, the phrase is usually ‘change of tack’,) “chaffed and reddened by a cold Scottish wind” (chafed and reddened,) “all was not as it seemed” (not all was as it seemed,) “oblivious of his presence” (it’s ‘oblivious to’ not ‘oblivious of’,) “as his drove on” (as he drove on,) “the Kingsbarns’ killings” (Kingsbarns here is adjectival, not possessive; ‘the Kingsbarns killings’,) two police acronyms used and immediately explained within two lines (both could have been avoided or worked around without loss of clarity,) “not to help him breath” (help him breathe,) facia (fascia,) “and looked at Gilchrist’s way” (and looked Gilchrist’s way,) “seemed to be order of the day” (to be the order of the day) “toodle-do” (the formulation is usually ‘toodle-oo’.)