Bloody Scotland festival highlights

This weekend (15^th-18^th September) in Stirling was the 10^th anniversary of Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival, where writers and readers gather together for a wide range of events. Bloody Scotland was started by a group of Scottish crime writers in 2012 as a showcase for the best crime writing in Scotland and across the world. Two awards ceremonies opened up the proceedings.

The finalists for both The McIlvanney Prize and The Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, along with attendees of the festival, held flaming torches aloft on the Stirling Castle esplanade to the sounds of a pipe band, then marched through Stirling old town. This year included a minute’s silence for the Queen at the castle before descending to the Albert Halls, where the winners were announced.

The winner of the Scotland Debut Prize 2022 was Tariq Ashkanani with Welcome to Cooper (Thomas & Mercer), set in Nebraska. The winner of the McIlvanney Prize 2022 was Alan Parks with May God Forgive (Canongate), a police procedural set in Glasgow.

The events of Bloody Scotland included panels with writers on a variety of crime-related topics, masterclasses, a social night with music (Crime at the Coo), a football match (Scotland versus England, Scotland won) and interviews with authors such as Jeffrey Archer, Anthony Horowitz and Sir Ian Rankin.

In fact, those are some of the highlights of the festival. Anthony Horowitz’s passion for writing and for books shone through and came about when he was a boy trapped in a horrible boarding school, when he used reading as an escape. Horowitz was humble and very funny as he raced through his prolific writing career and discussed his various projects from his Bond books to his Hawthorne book series in which he appears himself as a character solving murders.

Another highlight was Jeffrey Archer, an engaging public speaker with a wealth of anecdotes. Frankie Boyle was also entertaining. The interview with him covered a lot of ground. He spoke about artificial intelligence, about his own relationship with drugs, and about issues such as Scottish snobbery against its own culture and how Scotland needs to nurture its own talent.

Authors John Connolly and Alex North’s talk about violence in crime novels was also a highlight. They discussed how they wouldn’t write violence in the same way now that they are more mature than when they were younger. They pointed out that some crime authors use violence in place of originality, to shock a reader and get attention.

Other writers in attendance included Ann Cleeves, Lucy Foley and Martin Edwards, among a great number of others. Ann Cleeves brought a professor of pathology on stage with her to discuss how she consults him on details for her books.

Other panels discussions included serial killer novels to political crime fiction, and how ‘cosy crime’ has made a big comeback lately.