Crime Tour of Scotland - Banff

This month on our Crime Tour of Scotland we’re off to sunny Banff, county town of historic Banffshire (now reluctantly subsumed mostly into Aberdeenshire and partly into Moray), a town of underrated charms. Now, Stuart McBride has ventured up here from Aberdeen, but the crime queen of Banff is Shona MacLean, now writing as S.G. MacLean, accomplished, charming, and seriously into her history (I can at least relate to the last of these!).

She first came to our notice as the author of The Redemption of Alexander Seaton in 2009: this turned out to be the first of a new series, taking us between Banff and Aberdeen and even, for one book, across to Ulster. Set in the 1620s, the series inevitably takes us into the political conflicts of the time and also into the inevitable rivalry between Aberdeen’s two universities (it was said for many years that Aberdeen had as many universities as all of England! They only unified in 1860, and now, of course, there are two again with the development of Robert Gordon’s University from the old Institute of Technology – there you are, every day’s a school day). It’s not always easy to set a historical novel in a place that has changed considerably, in Aberdeen’s case with spurts of development relating to Victorian shipbuilding and 20^th century oil discoveries, and Banff is less of a challenge, but in both towns MacLean portrays the place in a way that not only persuades the reader of the historical setting, but also captures the personality of the towns today. The research lies easily in the plot and the characters are very compelling and interesting, their struggles convincing in the context.

MacLean has a new series out, The Seeker, set in the time of Charles II (later 17^th. century) which I have not yet tried, and must do so. But I can thoroughly recommend this series, and if you are one of the people who becomes a little bogged down in the complex politics of the Ulster book, then don’t be put off: it’s back to form with Book 3!