CrimeReads just featured Dundee - and it’s as gritty, gothic and gripping as you’d expect
- Andrew Batchelor
- 1 day ago
- 1 min read
CrimeReads has just profiled Dundee – and if you pictured the city as all waterfront museums and cool panache - forget it.
Dundee has now become an atmospheric setting for crime fiction, dark alleys, industrial grit and Gothic edges that are perfect for tales of murder and mystery.
The piece takes a look at how Scotland's "coolest little city" has a few more skeletons than its literary closet should have.
They began by pointing out Malcolm Archibald's Victorian-era Detective Watters series, set amidst the city's hazy past, before proceeding to the more idiosyncratic face of Dundee noir with Catriona McPherson's The Mirror Dance.
From there they dived into modern grime with Chris Longmuir's DS Bill Murphy novels – all blood-stained tenements and gangland silhouettes.
They then featured Dundonian Wendy H Jones and her DI Shona McKenzie novels, full of killings against snowy pavements and ancient cemeteries, and journalist Alexander McGregor's The Law Killers, a true crime take on Dundee's most notorious real-life crimes.
Rounding out the feature, CrimeReads welcomed Hania Allen's Polish detective DI Dania Gorska – a foreigner in a foreign city, uncovering sinister secrets from Dundee streets to the surrounding rural areas.
It's clear Dundee is more than just a backdrop – it's a character in and of itself.
Atmospheric, gloomy and with plenty of contrast, the city has become a surprise but perfect home for Tartan Noir.
With CrimeReads, the world beyond Scotland is beginning to take notice.
