Sir Ian James Rankin is a Scottish crime writer and philanthropist, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.
William Angus McIlvanney was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He was known as Gus by friends and acquaintances. McIlvanney was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of Tartan Noir" and as Scotland's Camus.
Jon "Jo" Nesbø is a Norwegian writer, musician, and former football player and reporter. More than 3 million copies of his novels had been sold in Norway as of March 2014, and he had sold over 50 million copies worldwide by 2021, making him the most successful Norwegian author of all time. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Christopher Brookmyre is a Scottish novelist whose novels, generally in a crime or police procedural frame, mix comedy, politics, social comment and action with a strong narrative. He has been referred to as a Tartan Noir author. His debut novel was Quite Ugly One Morning; subsequent works have included All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye (2005), Black Widow (2016) and Bedlam (2013), which was written in parallel with the development of a first-person shooter videogame, also called Bedlam. He also writes historical fiction with his wife, Dr Marisa Haetzman, under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry.
Denise Mina is a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also written for comic books, including 13 issues of Hellblazer.
Roger Jon Ellory is an English thriller writer.
Seeking Whom He May Devour is a crime novel by French writer Fred Vargas. As with many of Vargas' novels in English translation, the English title bears no relationship to the original. In this case, it is a biblical quotation from the First Epistle of Peter (5:8): Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. The French title is more apposite, referring to an aspect of the werewolf myth that plays some part in the story, that the werewolf when in human form is wearing the wolfskin inside out. An alleged werewolf may therefore be exposed by cutting, when wolf-hair will be seen in the wound.
Peter May is a Scottish television screenwriter, novelist, and crime writer. He is the recipient of writing awards in Europe and America. The Blackhouse won the U.S. Barry Award for Crime Novel of the Year and the national literature award in France, the CEZAM Prix Litteraire. The Lewis Man won the French daily newspaper Le Télégramme's 10,000-euro Grand Prix des Lecteurs. In 2014, Entry Island won both the Deanston's Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the UK's ITV Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year Award. May's books have sold more than two million copies in the UK and several million internationally.
Peter J. James is a British writer of crime. He was born in Brighton, the son of Cornelia James, the former glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.
Europa Editions is an independent trade publisher based in New York. The company was founded in 2005 by the owners of the Italian press Edizioni E/O and specializes in literary fiction, mysteries, and narrative non-fiction.
Mick Herron is a British mystery and thriller novelist. He is the author of the Slough House series, early novels of which have been adapted for the Slow Horses television series. He won the Crime Writers' Association 2013 Gold Dagger award for Dead Lions.
The novel in Scotland includes all long prose fiction published in Scotland and by Scottish authors since the development of the literary format in the eighteenth century. The novel was soon a major element of Scottish literary and critical life. Tobias Smollett's picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle mean that he is often seen as Scotland's first novelist. Other Scots who contributed to the development of the novel in the eighteenth century include Henry Mackenzie and John Moore.
Blood Eagle is a novel by Craig Russell. First published in 2005, it is the first in a series of crime novels set in Hamburg, Germany, and featuring Kriminalhauptkommissar Jan Fabel. Blood Eagle, as well the follow-up novels in the series, are characterized by their use of history, mythology and legend. In Blood Eagle, Fabel hunts a serial-killer who uses an ancient Viking ritual of human sacrifice, the blood eagle, to kill his victims.
Mary Paulson-Ellis is a Scottish writer and novelist. She writes across the genres of literary, crime and historical fiction. Her work has appeared in the Guardian and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her books have received a number of awards. Paulson-Ellis’ first novel, The Other Mrs Walker (2016) became a Times bestseller and was named Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year in 2017.
Bloody Scotland is a Scottish international crime writing festival, held annually in Stirling, Scotland. It was founded in 2012 by Tartan Noir writers Lin Anderson and Alex Gray and describes itself as "the literary festival where you can let down your hair and enjoy a drink at the bar with your favourite crime writer". Its sponsors include the University of Stirling and Stirling Council. In 2022 most events were held at the Albert Halls or the Tolbooth.
Francine Toon, also writing as Francine Elena, is a British writer.
Alan Parks is a Scottish crime writer in the Tartan Noir genre. His fifth novel May God Forgive won the 2022 McIlvanney Prize as the best Scottish crime book of the year.
