Two Scottish novels

Following on from my visit to the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh, I’ve recently been reading a couple of books by Scottish authors – John Buchan and Ian Rankin, both of whom happen to be favourite writers of mine. One is a tale of cruelty and intolerance in the Lowlands of the seventeenth century, the other a story of murder and violence in modern Edinburgh.

First published in 1927, Witch Wood is one of John Buchan’s historical novels, and as such there’s a lot more depth to this than there is in what he called his ‘shockers’ – think Midwinter rather than The Power-House and Greenmantle. Buchan himself thought of it as his best novel. It’s set in Scotland at the time of the Civil War, an age of religious extremism which came in the form of the Presbyterian-inspired Solemn League and Covenant. In such an age, those who sided with Charles I could expect to be denounced as traitors and hunted down without mercy (their leader, the Marquis of Montrose – also the subject of a biography by Buchan, and who makes a brief appearance in Witch Wood – was a particular hate-figure), while by contrast it was not unknown for apparently upstanding and devout Covenanters to privately dabble in crime and devil-worship (Major Thomas Weir of Edinburgh being the most notorious example).

Witch Wood is the story of David Sempill, a newly-ordained Church of Scotland minister sent to a Lowland village called Woodilee. Although the villagers are firm in their Covenanter beliefs, their minister is less so to the point of befriending and sheltering Mark Kerr, a fugitive supporter of the afore-mentioned Great Montrose. Such tolerance is a dangerous act in itself, but it soon turns out to be the least of his problems.

Devil-worship is at the dark heart of Witch Wood, for David witnesses a diabolic ritual taking place in the woods; the satanists’ ringleader turns out to be Ephraim Caird, a prominent elder of the Kirk who is able use his standing in the community to turn the parish against its minister. A witch-finder arrives in Woodliee, and in the communal hysteria that follows the innocent suffer more than the guilty; to this is added an outbreak of the plague (vividly described) while a love-story between David and the ethereal Katrine plays out to its tragic conclusion. It is here that Buchan comes into his own, raising questions about human nature and religious tolerance with particular reference to self-deception and self-righteousness while not yielding to the temptation to merely brand certain characters as out-and-out hypocrites, although the novel certainly does deal with the contradictions which can become apparent in a society where religion totally dominates life (to a degree that is difficult to comprehend nowadays).

The conclusion is nothing if not dramatic, as David loses everything before he finally confronts Caird in the wood, forcing the latter to choose between God and the devil. David is never seen in the locality again, thus giving rise to the legends of the minister’s disappearance which are related in the novel’s prologue. This is a novel that works on many levels, with the exploration of important questions coming alongside an excellent description of the landscape – always a strong feature of Buchan’s – and strong depictions of the ordinary parishoners caught up in the events described; farmers so attached to the land that they are known by the names of their farms, cottagers, women – especially Isobel Veitch, David’s housekeeper – and Daft Gibbie, the village idiot. These well-drawn characters serve to add another layer of complexity, for with the notable exceptions of the leader characters Buchan has written much of the dialogue in the Lowland Scots dialect which can make the story a bit hard to follow at times; thank goodness my copy – a modern Polygon paperback version – has a glossary! A heavy read, but a rewarding one which I think may well benefit from a second or even a third reading, so I’m not getting rid of my copy yet.

Of a more recent vintage (2016), Rather be the Devil by Ian Rankin is the twenty-first appearance of John Rebus, the hard-nosed Edinburgh detective who by now has once again retired from the police but that doesn’t stop him from getting involved in cases alongside his younger associates, Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox (both DIs in Police Scotland, as Scotland’s various constabularies became in 2013, here depicted as a somewhat frayed organisation). Here, Rebus – trying to cut down on his trademark drinking and making a surprisingly good go of giving up smoking (thanks perhaps in part to his pathologist girlfriend giving him a specimen jar containing part of a diseased lung) – becomes obsessed with an old case from the Seventies, the unsolved murder of a glamorous socialite in the Caledonian Hotel.

This isn’t the first time a Rebus novel has focussed on a case from the past (witness 2013’s Saints of the Shadow Bible which was in part about investigations into an old CID unit which had a distinct whiff of Life on Mars). He’s showing his age – he first appeared in Knots and Crosses, 31 years ago – and mortality isn’t far from the surface as he is diagnosed with having a shadow on one of his lungs (naturally, he takes to referring to it as Hank Marvin; musical references are never far from the surface in the Rebus books, the title of this one coming from a John Martyn song).

Age and shadows are recurring themes here, along with violence, power, greed and betrayal. Once again Rankin’s focus is on the seedy side of Edinburgh – think dodgy nightclubs and even dodgier betting-shops, with much of the action taking place in the evening rather than in broad daylight. A would-be crime boss by the name of Darryl Christie has been beaten unconscious on his own doorstep. He’s trying to fill the void left by Rebus’s old nemesis, veteran crime boss ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, and it’s not long before rumours abound that Cafferty himself is behind it, hoping to come out of retirement. The beating should be Clarke’s case, but because Christie’s money-laundering activities are of interest to HMRC, Fox – previously transferred to the Scottish Crime Campus, which Clark resented – gets involved too. An attention-seeking vagrant who serially confesses to crimes (and who had previously appeared in 1997’s Black and Blue, one of the best in the series in which Rebus investigated an updated version of the real-life ‘Bible John’ murders) serves to bring Rebus himself on board in a semi-official capacity.

There is of course a link between the decades-old murder and the beating, for Christie is associated with Anthony Brough, the scion of an old Scottish banking family – and the murder victim, Maria Turquand, had been married to a man who worked for said bank. Not that she’d been faithful to him, adding various lovers to the list of suspects which includes a rock star who was staying in the Caledonian along with his entourage at the time of the murder (and who now lives just around the corner from the hotel in question). Brough, by the way, has disappeared, and the body of an ex-copper who worked on the Turquand murder is fished out of the Leith Docks (suicide it isn’t). There’s a mysterious Russian, who’s actually Ukrainian. Oh, and there’s violence a-plenty, some of it involving a hammer and some six-inch nails.

These distinct yet interlinked plots lead to something of a juggling act on Rankin’s part. Rebus and Cafferty are approaching the same point from very different angles. Being a criminal, Big Ger of course is subject to fewer constraints – although the retired Rebus, explicitly more concerned with the outcome rather than the process, is not averse to cutting a few corners himself, such as when he pretends to be Fox (a non-drinking anti-Rebus who, despite his more by-the-book approach, is the one who becomes increasingly compromised as the plot thickens). As was the case with Buchan, local knowledge and detail are key features alongside skilled story-telling. The ‘Caley’ is a real hotel, although as Rankin points out, it’s now the Waldorf Astoria, and there are nods to ongoing roadworks on Lothian Road and (of course!) the Oxford Bar amid confusion about the geography of Edinburgh on the part of some cops sent in from elsewhere. In short, this is a fast-paced and well-told story; Rebus may be getting on a bit, but his creator is still at the top of his game.