What is Tartan Noir? - Chris Longmuir
Chris Longmuir You’ve probably come across references to Tartan Noir on the internet and various other places, and if you walk into a bookstore in Scotland , the chances are you’ll see a display labelled Tartan Noir. But what is Tartan Noir? The name is an odd mix. The tartan part of the name smacks of tourism, kilts, heather and bagpipes, all the stuff that attracts people to Scotland , although it is not all that relevant in today’s modern world. The second part of the title –Noir – is more reminiscent of blood and gore, and all the horrible things that happen in the darkest of crime fiction. So it is an odd mix indeed. It was actually the American crime writer, James Ellroy who coined the name when he referred to Ian Rankin as the King of Tartan Noir in the 1990s. Since then it seems to have been taken up to describe Scottish crime fiction in general, and has now been given historical antecedents. The origins of Tartan Noir in Scottish literature are claimed to be ro...