Devil’s Advocate: A Review Of Neil Broadfoot’s All The Devils…

 

The last few years have seen a real development in the breadth of what I’m going to loosely call Scottish crime fiction. A genre which for so long seemed one-dimensional in style as well as content has become as varied and interesting as any other area in Scottish writing today, arguably more so.

Don’t misunderstand me, there have always been great writers in this genre. McIllvanney, Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid – they all have a style which is distinctly theirs and which has shaped how we think of modern crime writing. But, in the last 15 years we have had important and genre busting novels from Louise Welsh, Doug Johnstone, Alex Gray, Helen Fitzgerald, Neil Mackay, Mary Paulson Ellis and Graeme Macrae Burnet, with each writer being very different in terms of style and content, but they were all to be found on the programme for the Bloody Scotland Book Festival 2016. Where readers used to perceive stereotypes they can now find variety and fresh perspectives. Continue reading “Devil’s Advocate: A Review Of Neil Broadfoot’s All The Devils…”