Nelson 2 Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve. (Denise Mina, The New York Times, 22 Jul 2006) Introduction While some argue that Edgar Allen Poe started the genre with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841, there is evidence of Chinese crime fiction from nearly a millennium before him (Bailey 2). No matter its first appearance, one can argue that crime fiction now spans the globe; almost every country has a cadre of crime fiction writers, some better known than others. Crime fiction writers in Scotland are some of the most widely read in the world, Denise Mina, William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin, and Stuart McBride, to name a few. Their books have sold tens of millions of copies and been translated into 40 languages. Scottish crime fiction is a multifaceted genre with boundaries that are difficult to define in precise terms, much like the Gothic in which crime fiction finds its Western roots. Because of its nebulous nature, it is impossible to discuss crime fiction from Scotland without covering the country’s national identity, which has itself been everchanging. Gill Plain has suggested: Scottish crime fiction, then, has had a clearly defined oppositional identity, but it is also shaped by a wider Scottish literary tradition [which has] produced a rich literature of duality, deceit, repression and hypocrisy. (133) The significance of this statement lies in the fact that devolution—the transference of some powers previously held by the United Kingdom Parliament in London to a newly created Scottish Parliament—is, in theory, a utopian ideal, whereas crime Nelson 3 fiction is decidedly dystopian in tone. Plain concludes that while devolution may not have played out as expected, it has drawn Scottish writers “to explore new territories of mind, body and ‘state’” (140). Considering Plain’s assertion, I argue that the intersections among queerness, gender, and post-devolution Scottish identity, in conversation with contemporary Scottish crime fiction, provide a way to better understand the impact that queer writers have exerted on the dynamics of the genre by pushing against the heterosexual and cisgender traditions of crime fiction. In exploring this confluence of literary lenses and Scottish crime fiction, this thesis will focus on the recent novels 1979 by Val McDermid, The Second Cut by Louise Welsh, and Emma Christie’s The Silent Daughter, which are all crime fiction novels written by authors who identify as queer. I use the terms “queer,” “queerness,” and “queering” throughout this thesis to designate individuals and processes that challenge and question identity (such as gender, sexual orientation, masculinity, and femininity) as well as a range of systems of oppression. These novels by McDermid, Welsh, and Christie feature protagonists who queer not only their identities but also the professional and social strata they inhabit. While crime fiction was long deemed merely entertainment and lacking any artistic value (Plain 2008 4), within the last twenty years, scholars have recognized that crime fiction “offers a complex and very accurate portrayal of the society it is produced in, with each text becoming an exercise on reflection and morality” (Álvarez 140). Such a view of the genre is especially true for Scottish writers. According to author Christopher Brookmyre, “Scottish writers almost always place Nelson 4 crime in a context that forces the protagonist to confront the social, economic and political factors that have given rise to the narrative's events” (Foster), making crime fiction a particularly appropriate genre for exploring both queerness and what it means to be Scottish. To understand the genre of crime fiction in Scotland, one must understand the transformation of the country itself and what it means to be Scottish. James Crawford speculates that the reason Scottish writers are drawn to and are successful in writing crime fiction is “down to their being so skilled at unpeeling these layers of personality, to expose the raw nerves of identity, and truth” (Crawford). The sense of shared national identity within Scotland changed in 1999 with the vote for devolution. With that drastic change of nationhood, both literature and attitudes regarding political and social issues changed; there was a softening of the masculine bent of nationality previously associated with Scotland.1 Recent scholarship looks to contemporary Scottish works attempting to reconcile a shift from the hypermasculine Scotsman and its toxic version of masculinity to a post-devolution national identity that has softened and allows its national identity to move past binary-enforcing markers, essentially queering Scottish national identity. In her dissertation, The Queer Moment: Post-Devolution Scottish Literature, Kate Turner asserts that it is 1 Kate Turner’s The Queer Moment: Post-Devolution Scottish Literature tackles the shift of Scottish national identity from the hyper- and toxic masculinity of pre-devolution Scotland to a more open-minded masculinity post-devolution. Additionally, in “Radical Hospitality: Christopher Whyte and Cosmopolitanism,” Fiona Wilson argues that “the hope is for a [post-devolution] Scotland less defensive and less anxious, as well as more open to multiple ways of knowing, being, living and loving” (194). Nelson 5 possible to map a trajectory of change in Scotland and this extends far beyond the process of a nation becoming more ‘tolerant’ of LGBT rights in line with the general western gay rights movement. This transformation entails something different; it indicates a process whereby the fundamental construction of Scottish national identity has changed. (7-8) Several verifiable facts back up Turner’s argument. A few decades after homosexuality was decriminalized in 1980, Scotland became one of the fairest countries for LGBT legal rights in Europe. It elected a female first minister, and it selected the highest number of LGBT political leaders in the world. Moreover, it recently appointed Jackie Kay, an ‘out’ lesbian, as its Makar (Turner 7). Additionally, in the few short years since Turner wrote these words, the Scottish Government announced the implementation of an LGBT history and education curriculum. It passed a national hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation and gender identities. The Scottish Episcopal Church approved same-sex marriage within church canon law, among other progressions in LGBT equitability. Influencing this softening was the literature produced not only by Scottish women writers like Liz Lochhead, Janice Galloway, and Muriel Spark but also by openly queer writers such as Jackie Kay, Val McDermid, and Carol Ann Duffy. Val McDermid’s 1979 and Pushing Against the Codes of Traditional Crime Fiction Until the 1990s, Scottish crime fiction was the purview of men. Male writers dominated the genre, and their male protagonists were the experts more often than not, while female characters portrayed the victims of violence and murder. Indeed, Nelson 6 Plain has also argued that “Thinking about gender in relation to crime fiction is not simply a matter of representation; it is also the case that the genre itself—its formal structures and stylistic features—has long been considered gendered” (“Gender and Sexuality” 102). However, in the late 1980s, American female authors such as Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton were beginning to make waves in crime fiction. This timing was fortunate for Val McDermid, who published her first crime fiction novel, Report for Murder, in 1987. Paretsky’s and Grafton’s books hit the market in the UK that same year, and McDermid benefitted from the timing. McDermid noted in an article in The Independent on 12 September 2010 that “My first three novels, featuring the UK’s first openly lesbian detective, Lindsay Gordon, were published 20 years ago by the Women’s Press, a small feminist publishing house whose output went largely unreviewed by the mainstream press and was ignored by chain booksellers” (“Niche Off the Leash”). Those second and third books featuring an openly gay main character were daring because the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher passed Section 28, anti-LGBT legislation, in 1988. However, there has been a reversal of attitudes about LGBT equality since the repeal of Section 28 in 2000. The dissolution has led to a movement for equality for the LGBT community in the UK. In that same article, McDermid notes that fellow author Sarah Waters believes that the recent proliferation of gay and lesbian writers at “the centre of literary life has something to do with a general loosening up within UK society” (“Niche Off the Leash”). Within this confluence of changes in attitudes toward women and LGBT community members, Val McDermid burst onto the stage of Scottish crime fiction. Nelson 7 In 1987, when Report for Murder was published, McDermid was working as a journalist. This first novel challenged the genre’s tradition in two ways: her protagonist was a feminist woman, and her protagonist was not heterosexual. In Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction, Gender, Sexuality and the Body, Gill Plain argues that regardless of a literary investigator’s gender or sexual orientation, they will always exist “in negotiation with a series of long-established masculine codes” (11). An author’s willingness to push against those established boundaries with their characters in conforming or challenging such roles is pivotal to an “understanding of crime fiction and the changing role of the investigator within the genre” (11). With Lindsey Gordon, an openly lesbian detective character, McDermid pushed hard against those traditional codes, just as her protagonist did. McDermid had a decision to make, however. She explains in that September 2010 article in The Independent: Back then, the notion that a commercial house would publish a novel that featured a lesbian protagonist was laughable. I knew that I’d never make a living as a writer if I stuck to writing about Lindsay. . . . [B]ecause I was writing genre fiction—whose fans devour backlists of newly discovered writers—readers who discovered me later in my career had no qualms about tracking down those early lesbian novels. (“Niche Off the Leash”) While she never gave up writing queer characters and continued to push against the gendered codes of traditional crime fiction, those characters’ sexualities were not at the forefront of her stories until 1979 was published in August 2021. In 1979, McDermid created Allie Burns and Danny Sullivan, two LGBTQ+ Nelson 8 characters, although Allie assumes that she is ‘straight’ in the beginning because of the societal pressure of compulsory heterosexuality. Allie and Danny are newspaper reporters who find themselves investigating crimes and their effects on the people they know and love. Allie had been to university in Cambridge for three years while studying journalism, then to the northeast of England for two years of apprenticeship and training. “She’d been aiming for Fleet Street and a national daily. But the new editor on her final training scheme post was an old drinking buddy of his opposite number on the Daily Clarion in Glasgow. And it was a national daily, if you counted Scotland as a nation” (1979 11). Here, McDermid introduces us to Scotland on the brink of devolution, not quite a nation, not quite sure of its place. Allie had bumped into Danny at Haymarket station to catch a train back to Glasgow after spending a holiday with their respective families. Within the first few pages, McDermid establishes that Danny isn’t like the other men in the newsroom who give off predatory vibes, and he also happens to be attractive. There is a nod to Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express when the train becomes stuck along its journey south due to snow, and they wait for a plow to clear the tracks. However, instead of murder, a pregnant woman has gone into labor. Danny is a first aider and delivers the baby, then tells Allie that she should write the story: ‘It’s a page lead at the very least, Allie. Maybe even the splash.’ ‘If it is, it’s your story,’ she said. ‘You saved the day.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a woman’s story. You know that’s what the desk will say.’ Nelson 9 He had a point. She was growing accustomed to the twisted logic behind the allocation of stories. It had taken years for women reporters to gain a toehold in national tabloid newsrooms. Eventually it had dawned on the bosses that some stories benefited from what they called ‘a woman’s touch.’ (19) For Allie, navigating the newsroom and the men who dominate it does not come easily, and she is not the self-assured tell-it-like-it-is character that Lindsay Gordon is. In fact, in the beginning, Allie often comes across as a bit out of her depth in the newsroom. “She’d dreamed of swelling the ranks of the New Journalism. But working first on a local evening paper and now on a daily tabloid had been a rude awakening. Even the feature writers wrote in tabloidese, a weird jargon of clichés and shortcuts” (25). Initially, Allie takes the stories the editors give her, the “woman stories.” While she’s good at them, she wants to investigate. She wants to uncover the darker stories that her male coworkers are assigned, even when Allie and the editors know that she’s a better writer. When Danny determines that he can trust her with a big story he’s working on, however, Allie begins to find her stride. Danny, on the other hand, is confident and charming. He fits into the newsroom without stooping to the misogynistic behaviors of many other men, acting in stark contrast to the hypermasculine mentality of pre-devolution Scotsmen. This contrast is an example of McDermid shoving against the inherent compulsory performances of gender roles at the time. His central investigation begins when his adopted older brother makes an off-hand comment about his work Nelson 10 at an insurance company, and something feels off to Danny. He begins collecting the threads and weaving them together, which soon indicates that the firm is laundering money and his brother is up to his neck in it: “He needed to talk to someone who understood the game. But not someone like McGovern who would try to steal his story out from under him. Or deliberately unsettle him out of jealousy. Someone like Allie Burns” (49). As Allie helps Danny with his big story, she finds herself thinking of Danny as a potential romantic interest. She also strikes up a friendship with Rona Dunsyre, who runs the women’s pages in the same newspaper. Rona puts Allie onto a big story of her own when suggesting that Allie check-in with the pro-devolution women in the Labor Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP). When she asks Rona why she’s being helpful, “Rona grinned. ‘Because I’m a feminist, Allie. And I can spot a sister’” (66). As these details demonstrate, Allie has allies at the newspaper, and the fact that Danny and Rona trust her engenders feelings of confidence in her abilities and skills as an investigator. As Allie spends more time with Danny and Rona, she discovers she has a voice. Mirroring Scotland’s progression towards a vote on devolution, Allie begins to find her stride in the newsroom. Just as the nation is working to become more self-governing, Allie starts to stand up for herself and set boundaries, often resorting to humor to enforce those boundaries and deflect the sexist remarks sent her way. When she attends an SNP political meeting leading up to the vote on devolution, Allie figures that there is a story in students’ apprehensions regarding how their votes will be counted. Since students are registered twice, their ballots will either Nelson 11 cancel out each other as a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ or as two ‘no’ votes. This count is significant because the voting rules on the devolution referendum held in the year 1979 required that “40% of the electorate — rather than of those voting — had to vote ‘yes’ in March 1979 for the Acts to be implemented” (Dewdney 8). Therefore, the double-counted student votes would skew that percentage lower, potentially dooming the referendum.2 When she brings the student vote article idea to the editor on duty, he instead sends her out on a story about a nude beach in Ayrshire, passing the story on to the politics desk. So, with some encouragement from a co-worker called Big Kenny, a photographer named Bobby Gibson, and a model Bobby knows, Allie determines to beat the misogynists at their own game. She, Bobby, and Sandie, the model, drive to the promised nude beach, where Sandie drops her robe, runs naked into the water, and Bobbie photographs her. Once Bobby has his photos, Allie writes her copy for the story, including every heavy-handed pun she can come up with in the opening: Today the Clarion exclusively reveals the naked truth. Following a nationwide survey, only one council in the UK is willing to strip for action and provide a nudist beach. Some might have the bare-faced cheek to say Ayrshire is too cold to keep abreast of fashion. (97) Grudgingly, the editors begin showing her some respect, especially as both Danny’s and her stories take shape. This showing of appreciation for her work, however 2 According to Results of Devolution Referendums (1979 & 1997) the percentage of the electorate voting ‘yes’ was 32.5% (unadjusted) in 1979. Nelson 12 reluctantly given, illustrates the pushing back against proscribed gender roles in professional and social strata during the time and the continuation of McDermid’s work in disrupting those same roles in crime fiction. Taking a step away from Allie and Danny for a moment, I want to mention how McDermid’s descriptions of Glasgow bring the city to life. Contextualizing the setting in 1979 specifically, as well as in crime fiction generally, is necessary for the role that ‘place’ plays in the genre. Where the primary crime happens is the most important hallmark of crime fiction. Ultimately, ‘place’ situates the crime’s meaning; nothing makes sense in a crime fiction novel without ‘place.’ As Stewart King has argued, “crimes are place-specific in the sense that they are rooted in the particular physical, cultural, political, economic, environmental, social and, of course, legal circumstances of the place where the crime is committed” (211). With the importance of setting in mind, here is an example of McDermid’s deft touch in bringing the city of Glasgow to life as she describes Allie’s walk home one day: The sunshine brought out the rich red sandstone of the Kelvin Hall opposite, its garish circus posters shouting their promises across the street. Beyond them, the grim charcoal outlines of the Western Infirmary and the Gothic spire of the university reminded her that this was a city of contrasts; beauty and ugliness, extreme poverty and extreme wealth, drugged depression and savage humour. (111) These descriptions of Glasgow become imbued with meaning by providing societal and cultural context for the reader as they experience the city through McDermid’s characters and the crimes they are investigating. While not explaining the crime, Nelson 13 McDermid’s renderings of Glasgow make visible tangible and intangible elements which make the crime possible. Another aspect that McDermid seems to delight in is making Allie and Danny fans of crime fiction. The striving for truth and justice and reestablishing the status quo is inherently a part of crime fiction. McDermid’s establishing Allie’s and Danny’s interest in the genre in this way provides insight into the origins of their belief that exposing the truth and finding justice for victims is a noble pursuit, even when it comes at a high personal cost. Throughout different moments in the novel, McDermid drops Scottish crime fiction novels and TV show titles of the time, from William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw to television shows like Blake’s 7 and Strangers, of which Allie is a fan. On another occasion, she is pleased with “the surprise of a Ruth Rendell paperback she’d not read before. A Judgement in Stone sounded suitably ominous for her mood and the first sentence was provocative enough to drive her to the till. ‘Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write,’ was irresistible, she thought” (160). While Danny’s taste in crime fiction runs to the Superman and Batman comic books that he collected as a boy and reread whenever he overnighted at his childhood home (82), he was resolute in righting wrongs and making the world a better, fairer place like Allie and their literary heroes. Their internal drive to search for justice leads Allie to her stories. It also pushes Danny to pursue the story about the money-laundering scheme at the insurance firm his adopted brother Joseph worked for, even though it forces a massive wedge between himself and his family. Joseph is Danny’s polar opposite in Nelson 14 his lack of moral compass and how he manipulates their parents. Where Danny has an absolute sense of right and wrong, Joseph is out for what he can get for himself. He imposes his will on others regardless of the damage it might cause. Indeed, Joseph is another example of the pre-devolution, hard Scotsman, as are the three young men who show up at all the political meetings that Allie does. When one comments about making ‘them’ listen as they had in Ireland, Danny decides to go undercover to see what they might be planning. On the first occasion that Danny meets them, Derek ‘Deke’ Malloch, the ringleader, is “passing easy judgment on the failure of everyone else at the meeting to grasp the bull by the horns. ‘Or should I say, by the balls,’ he laughed. ‘They’ve got no idea how to wake up the sleeping giant that is Scotland’” (164). This passage speaks to centuries gone by and men like Robert the Bruce, who beat the clans into submission to form the initial nation of Scotland, and reiterates the rugged, masculine image of Scotland pre-devolution. The version of masculinity these three men exhibit becomes less common post-devolution. They are young men intent on not backing down in front of each other no matter what they feel—a tendency which the narrative links directly to Scottish republicanism3: Only hours before, the Gary Bell who had hooked up in the Spaghetti Factory with his two best mates and their new pal had been an ordinary bloke with a poor man’s Rod Stewart haircut and a desire to see Scotland break free from the English yoke. 3 Scottish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that Scotland should be an independent republic, as opposed to being under the monarchy of the United Kingdom. Nelson 15 Now the Gary Bell driving down the A77 was a member of an insurgent group committed to the armed struggle. (177) In that instant of foolish boasting, there is “a gauntlet thrown [down] before young men too afraid to back down before friends” (177) that leads to the beginning of a plan to destroy the symbols of England’s power and occupation on the way to a completely independent Scotland in their minds. Their crusade for Scottish independence is a central plot point. For instance, when the IRA cell indicates they are willing to supply them with explosives for their bombs, the young men are ecstatic: “Here’s to shaking off the shackles. Here’s to the New Republic” (195-6). As Allie and Danny talk about the situation a short time later, Danny feels some responsibility for pushing the men into action. Still, Allie is not having any of it: Exasperated, Allie said, ‘Gonnae no’ with the Catholic guilt. These guys were primed for trouble. [. . .] All we did was speed them along a road they were already driving down. That doesn’t make it our fault. What we’re doing is making sure they don’t get to their destination. (199-200) Playing alongside this question of Scotland’s identity in McDermid’s novel is the question about Allie’s identity. Not only is she finding her voice as a feminist in a misogynistic newsroom, notwithstanding an initial attraction to Danny, but by the end of the novel, Allie begins to question her own sexual orientation. Continuing to push against crime fiction’s traditional gender roles and sexualities, McDermid gently guides Allie from encounter to encounter with Danny and Rona as she becomes aware of their sexualities and her reactions to those Nelson 16 disclosures. However, she is initially naïve about their orientations. This naïveté is on full display in a conversation with Rona: ‘Danny could not be further from my type . . . Never mistake journalistic curiosity for desire. It’ll get you into all sorts of trouble.’ . . . And she was gone. Allie stared at the empty glass and wondered what that last exchange had really been about. (190) By the middle of the novel, Danny spills the beans about his and Rona’s sexual orientations. Because Danny is a gay man living in Glasgow when same-sex sexual activity was illegal in the UK, he must be careful about who he ‘comes out’ to. He shares this intimate detail about his personal life because he trusts Allie and believes that she, too, is queer based on her friendship with Rona, who he knows is a lesbian. At the time, Allie denies that she’s a lesbian, and their friendship and working partnership continue much as they had before the awkwardness of this conversation. However, at about the three-quarters mark, Danny is murdered, and Allie discovers his body when she goes to his flat for a celebratory dinner. They had wrapped up Allie’s story regarding the bombing attack plot of the three young men who had been rounded up and arrested. Her editor expresses his confidence in her investigative and writing skills and tells her that “there’s nobody Danny would rather write your story. And it is your story, Allie . . . You get your truth out there first” (303-4). In the aftermath of writing the story, solving Danny’s murder, and protecting a friend of Rona’s from being “outed” as a gay man in the story, Allie begins to question her own sexual orientation. Following the submission of her Nelson 17 article to the editor, Allie stops by Rona’s flat. Rona invites her in for a drink, and “Allie wondered whether she was imagining a seductive tone in Rona’s voice and suddenly felt both shy and embarrassed” (358). After thanking her for discovering two witnesses as alternatives to her friend William and his male escort alibi for the article of Danny’s murder, Rona throws her arms around Allie in a hug: All she could smell was Rona’s hair, the remains of the day’s perfume, the sweet breath of fresh wine. All she could see was intensified; brighter, sharper, richer in tone. She heard the blood rushing in her ears, felt the tickle of hair on her ear, the brush of dry lips on her cheek and the warm solidity of Rona’s body in her arms. Her anxiety and apprehension disappeared, replaced by anticipation. Allie fought momentarily against the sense it made inside her, then gave in. (359) Investigations like Allie’s into Danny’s murder reflect those that first appeared in lesbian detective stories published in the late 1970s and into the 80s by Mary Wing, Barbara Wilson, and McDermid herself. Plain asserts that “[t]hese were investigations that worked to question rather than consolidate the established social order and conventional categories of identity, resisting closure and radically reimagining the detective’s role” (109). McDermid has continued this work with Allie, Danny, and Rona in 1979 as Allie investigates Danny’s murder, examining “how a law biased towards repressive heteronormativity might be outwitted” (Plain 109). Such stories have the capacity to reimagine “Who detects, how they detect and what they detect” when crime fiction’s “capacity to interrogate the structural inequalities, cultural anxieties and psychic pressures of modernity” is employed Nelson 18 (Plain 109). In 1979, McDermid unsettles the traditional roles concerning sexual orientation and gender, further pushing against heterosexual and cisgender traditions in the genre. Louise Welsh’s The Second Cut: Societal Expectations and Queer Expressions in Glasgow’s Urbanity Louise Welsh has also worked to disrupt and unsettle traditional crime fiction expectations by continuing to illustrate the changing in societal expectations and growing freedom in expressions of identity within the urbanity of Glasgow. In The Second Cut, the follow-up novel to her 2002 novel, The Cutting Room, it is interesting not only to ponder how the protagonist Rilke and the city of Glasgow have changed between the two texts, but how societal expectations have altered in the intervening twenty years. The Second Cut is a novel with a specific political motive, a commentary on the othering of the queer community in Glasgow, and the level of tolerance for difference. Welsh’s protagonist Rilke is now well into middle age, but sex, drugs, and intrigue still hold court, albeit in a ‘kinder,’ more accepting Glasgow. What has and has not changed for Rilke over the past twenty years? In 2022, it’s all “equal weddings, surrogates, gay community, queer allies, trans rights, drag queens spilling-the-T-on-prime-time-TV. The world changes, the world stays the same” (3). There is more freedom in expressing identities, which has always been the central concern of the crime fiction genre (Hynynen 23). Welsh has said that she wrote The Second Cut because enough had changed. “I wrote that first book with hysterical laughter and a lot of anger during the campaign to defeat clause 28,” says Welsh in referring to Section 28 (also known as Clause 28), which Nelson 19 was part of the Local Government Act 1988 (Anderson). Section 28 demanded that local authorities such as schools “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” (legislation.gov.uk). While Section 28 is no longer in effect and marriage is now an option for queer couples in Scotland, as illustrated by the wedding of Rilke’s friends at the beginning of the story, it is not in the cards for Rilke. According to Welsh: People still have ideas that queer lives are a bit transitory; they confuse it with just being completely sexual—chance would be a fine thing! And so I wanted that image of a relationship that’s enduring, because Rilke won’t have that. To an extent, the genre demands that; if he settles down, it’s a different book. (Anderson) Consequently, Rilke uses an app called Grindr to engage in the furtive and numerous sexual encounters that populate his avowedly single lifestyle. It is within the urban setting of Glasgow that Rilke feels safest in living his personal life as an openly gay man, even when occasionally feeling unsafe in dealing with some individuals in his professional life. The isolation so many gay Glaswegians had to live in for so long has been overthrown by dating apps, and a new Scottish enfranchising gender ideology has cast off the constraints imposed by binary biology. “This is a new world. Women, men, in-between, outside in, upside down. Mrs Bun the baker’s wife can wear the butcher’s trousers if she fancies it. We can be anything we want to be” enthuses Rilke’s friend Les (80). The phenomenon of a relaxing of societal expectations and greater acceptance of expressions of gender identity and sexual orientations is not confined Nelson 20 to Glasgow; Edinburgh is also experiencing such a renaissance. In this confluence of moving towards a more equitable and open Scottish urbanity, we meet with Rilke once again. The auction house he works at, Bowery Auctions, is experiencing cash flow problems. Rilke’s friend and boss, Rose, is scrambling to find a solution. That’s when an opportunity lands at Rilke’s feet. One of his oldest acquaintances tells him about a large estate house outside the city needing to be cleared. While it seems like a potential payday for Bowery Auctions, nothing is ever straightforward. A slew of problems lands at Rilke’s door after he and Rose take on the job at Ballantyne House in the countryside. Uber, human trafficking, gentrification, and Covid restrictions are also a part of Welsh’s novel involving questionable goings-on at the crumbling manor and farm and Rilke’s investigation into the sudden death of a long-time acquaintance named Jojo. In an established genre staple, Rilke’s detection “reveals the network of connections that underlie its apparent chaos and fragmentation” (Sandberg 341). As Rilke performs his work responsibilities, lives his personal life, and investigates Jojo’s death, he uses his connections with those who may not always walk on the right side of the law. Still, these relationships are well-established and long-lived, which allows Rilke some safety if he doesn’t cross certain lines with said individuals. For example, Rilke approaches Ray ‘Razzle’ Diamond, who owns a string of pawnshops about a drug dealer and all-around evil guy, Jamie Mitchell. Rilke thinks that Mitchell might have something to do with the GHB that Jojo was holding for someone when he died. Ray tells Rilke that he needs to get out of town because Nelson 21 Mitchell is throwing his weight around, and Rilke’s asking too many questions. When he asks Ray about Jojo, however, Ray turns cold, his “voice” becoming ice and glass. ‘These guys play with fire. They shouldn’t be surprised when they get burnt.’ I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck . . . ‘You watch yourself, Rilke.’ ‘Don’t worry. I’m like a cockroach – I’m a survivor.’ Ray looked down at the path. I followed his gaze and saw a small black beetle crawling slow and steady along the concrete. He raised his foot and squashed it under his heel. ‘Surviving’s not good enough. If you won’t run, you’re going to have to win.’ (204-5) Ray’s words are Rilke’s warning to either stand down and run or to step up and fight back, but Rilke isn’t one to back off when he sees an injustice, so he must figure out how to win. His drive to reestablish the status quo and get justice for a victim’s death is a prevalent tradition of crime fiction, especially traditional “whodunnits” and detective fiction. . .because of its teleological structure that leads to a final resolution, which means capturing and removing the transgressive element (i.e. the criminal) that has momentarily disturbed the social order. The resolution thus entails re-establishing order and returning to the status quo. (Hynynen 24) Such confrontations, though, are not new for crime fiction because the genre “seems to reinforce a reactionary social order by way of its solution and ultimate Nelson 22 punishment of transgressors [but also] demonstrates a predilection for transgressive (sexual) behaviour and (gender) identities” (Hynynen 20). As a gay protagonist, Rilke still queers traditional crime fiction through his transgressive sexual encounters, even while attempting to re-establish order and bring justice to those who are victims. While he occupies the edges of Glasgow society, Rilke is principled but ethically flexible. He is an intellectual and lonely man whose moral sense often leads him to make the wrong choices, albeit for the right reasons. This paradox is illustrated when Rilke inquires after the well-being of the elderly matriarch of Ballantyne House and farm, Mrs. Forrest. She is, according to her son and nephew, whom she raised, in a nursing home in Thailand, but Rilke has his doubts: “I took a deep breath. ‘I’m not here to cause trouble. I just need to know that nothing bad has happened to her. Illegality I can cope with, cruelty I can’t’” (Welsh 334). Rilke is also upset by the human trafficking occurring on the farm. The Forrest cousins have been using trafficked men to grow the marijuana that Jamie Mitchell has strong-armed them into cultivating for him: “I raised my voice. ‘It doesn’t matter what Mitchell did. You held them prisoner. You were responsible for their treatment’” (335). The Second Cut is a meditation on how easily people are othered, whose lives are considered valuable, and how those who are ‘different’—from migrants and elderly people to queer individuals—are treated. However, as with any good crime fiction novel, in the end, there is a race to save the vulnerable and innocent, heap deserved punishment upon the criminals, and bring justice to the unfortunates. Rilke articulates the fallout of the half-truths that get told and omissions that don’t see the light of day to restore the status quo: Nelson 23 I figured at the trial solely as a witness to the discovery of Patricia Forrest’s grave. The cousins, aware of Ray’s long reach, had accepted sole responsibility for the cannabis factory. The Vietnamese men had been absorbed by the city without leaving a ripple. Jamie Mitchell’s death remained unsolved. It was generally perceived as murky underworld mischief, intriguing but nothing that respectable people need worry about (348). The ambiguity of the justice meted out, both within the courtroom and outside it, reflects a contemporary society where absolute justice often does not exist. Where police look the other way in certain circumstances because dealing the devil they know is better than tangling with the one they don’t know. Welsh’s lack of a tidy, bow-wrapped finale reflects this balance of power, which characterizes most urban settings. At the end of it all, Rilke realizes that the GHB Jojo was holding belonged to Ray and was stolen from him by two of Jamie Mitchell’s thugs: “The misassumption that had led me to blame Mitchell for Jojo’s death. The desire for stability in the city’s underworld that made Anderson turn a blind eye. The fear that would keep me from telling anyone what I had learned” (359). There is nothing new about a crime fiction novel not resolving all the questions it raises, however. Andrea Hynynen argues that such “open-endedness and lack of a definitive closure constitute queer elements that are characteristic of crime fiction” (25). Within the pages of The Second Cut, Welsh comfortably engages in narratives that include a broad social range with Rilke and his circle illustrating the changing societal Nelson 24 expectations of and growing freedom in expressions of gender identity and sexual orientation in the shifting urbanity of Glasgow. Emma Christie’s The Silent Daughter and Queering the Crime at the Center While McDermid has been at the forefront of pushing against the codes of traditional crime fiction since 1987 and Welsh has been showcasing the changes in Glasgow's reception of queer identities since 2002, Emma Christie's 2021 debut, The Silent Daughter, brings something new to crime fiction. She engages in queering the crime itself that is central to the genre. Her novel starts in a 'straight' forward, traditional manner for crime fiction: a white, heterosexual man, Chris Morrison, is investigating how his wife Maria was found unconscious on the steps of Fleshmarket Close in Edinburgh. The difference between Christie's novel and the traditional male-centered crime novel is that Chris exhibits a softer version of masculinity. He is the parent who is devastated at finding his daughter Ruth following her attempt to commit suicide at thirteen years of age when the family is on vacation in Spain. Chris's emotional response to Ruth's suicide attempt is not the response that would have been expected in a male protagonist in a traditional crime fiction novel since emotion is the purview of female characters in those works. However, Christie does not shy away from writing the emotional horror Chris experiences in finding his young daughter, "the way the sun had bounced of the sharpened tip of the knife. He remembered the muffled roar of a plane passing overheard, wondered again what his life had looked like from above that day. Him, hunched over Ruth, hands slippery with her blood" (132). Chris is mentally undone by the event and experiences a breakdown that prompts his newspaper bosses to Nelson 25 reassign him from investigatory stories to the features desk. He has also had to learn how to deal with the onslaught of panic attacks: Panic isn’t every part of you, Chris. That was what Maria always told him. But when it took hold Chris felt as though his body was burning on the inside. It was a thundering chaos of vicious thoughts, it was blood and lungs and eyes moving far too fast. It was loneliness and terror like no other, every time. (61) Fifteen years later, Chris sits by Maria’s bedside at the hospital, trying to track down Ruth, who isn’t answering his calls or texts. He remembers how his inability to process and recover from the trauma of finding Ruth on “That Day” drove his wife to have an affair. And “When he’d asked her why she’d said it was hard to love somebody like Chris; somebody with a sadness that would never shift; somebody that she could not fix, regardless of how deeply she loved him” (80). As this new tragedy unfolds, Chris again struggles emotionally. Attempting to make sense of two mysteries—how his wife had, as the police believed, fallen on the steps of the close and where his daughter might be—brings back the fear and trauma from Ruth’s suicide attempt. Therefore, what we see with Chris is a model of Scottish masculinity that offers a contemporary alternative in which a man can be open with his emotions and still be viewed as a husband, father, protector, and provider. Christie establishes Chris as a sensitive man, with Maria acting as a more logically thinking foil, subverting traditionally prescribed male and female roles in crime fiction. This flipping of roles contrasts drastically with traditional gender roles in the genre because, according to Plain, Nelson 26 detective fiction has, throughout its history, valorised modes of knowledge conventionally associated with masculinity: Rationality, logic, the primacy of empiricism and the refusal of emotion . . . The transgressive desires and social taboos confronted by the sensational resist rational explanation and demand an investigation process open to the culturally feminine categories of the inexplicable, the chaotic and the corporeal. (“Gender and Sexuality” 102) As a male character with a traumatic background and emotional baggage, Chris’s feelings of responsibility in his relationships with his family are further complicated. His depth of feeling illustrates a shift not just in Scotland’s crime fiction but in its very social fabric. No one in Chris’s sphere regards him as not being masculine. While he is not queer in either his gender or sexual orientation, his emotional state can be construed as queering his masculinity, as Maria’s more stoic nature queers her femininity. In addition to the queering of Chris’s and Maria’s gender roles, there is a continually unsettled feeling throughout The Silent Daughter due to a series of interjections from an unnamed character responsible for Ruth’s disappearance. These interjections are a page or two in length and are set outside of chapter designations. They stand alone—part of the story, but not. The unidentified voice speaks in a way that causes the reader to wonder whether this person is Ruth’s age or older. Is it one of her schoolmates, her older brother, her uncle, or her father’s friend? But then Christie introduces a young man named Javi Fernandez, who might be responsible for Ruth’s disappearance. He has taken over for her at work, Ruth’s money has been transferred to his bank account, and Maria has received an email Nelson 27 from him with a subject line of “Me and Ruth” and the message, “Sorry” (Christie 209). The unnamed voice admits to causing Ruth’s death, but there is no certainty as to who it is: Killing Ruth was always part of the plan. I’d spent years of my life imagining it, that moment when I’d open her up, bring her insides to the outside. All it took was a sharp edge, pushed down hard enough. That’s it. I pictured her body from the inside, imagined the tip easing through her outer layer, past skin and fat and blood and bone and muscle, pushing through all the tiny pieces of Ruth that had always held her together. (221) This passage describes the very moment when Ruth ceased to exist. The anonymous vocalizations could belong to several individuals, including Chris’s best friend and mentor, Maria’s brother, or even their son Mikey. Still, as Chris continues to piece things together, he becomes convinced that Javi is responsible for Ruth’s disappearance and possible death. His conviction grows when he discovers that “Javi Fernandez was at Ruth’s flat the day she disappeared” (316). Chris goes searching for Ruth, then for Javi, then for Javi’s girlfriend Anna, and back to looking for Javi again. Christie keeps the mystery going until the final six chapters, when Chris pieces all the clues together and finally comes face-to-face with Javi in Ruth’s apartment. Chris takes one look at Javi’s face and knows that his daughter is gone forever, and he now has another son, for Ruth is transgender and has transitioned to live as Javi: Nelson 28 He recognised the face of the man on Ruth’s bed. So this was Javi Fernandez, right here in front of him. And, with him, the parts of Ruth that remained. The first word between them was her name, said softly. ‘Ruth?’ The answer was a shake of the head, but no apology. ‘I won’t answer to that name now,’ he said. ‘Call me Javi.’ (332-333) As a young girl, Ruth always felt that she could not be truthful about her life with Chris and Maria. Ruth never shared how she felt with her parents because she could not bear the thought of disappointing them. After all, they had lost their first daughter in infancy. So she spent her life trying to be the daughter she thought they wanted at the cost of her own happiness. In transitioning from a woman to a man, Javi, Ruth has ceased to exist, but not in the murdery-sense associated with traditional crime fiction. The shadow of Javi had haunted Ruth her entire life. “That Day,” fifteen years ago, was about physically killing Ruth, but as time passed and Scotland changed into a more tolerant society, Ruth could be ‘done away with’ in a more affirming and healthy manner. It became more acceptable to be transgender with ready resources and services that Javi could use during his transition. Through this storyline, Emma Christie queers the crime itself, which is central to the genre of crime fiction, and, in doing so, queers the crime novel. There is no real crime to solve, no actual kidnapping or murder. Even though Chris is right and there is a connection between Maria’s fall, Ruth’s disappearance, and Javi, it isn’t the link he thought it was. Nelson 29 Chris discovers that Javi was so shaken upon seeing the love and acceptance in Maria’s face when she recognized Ruth’s features in Javi’s face that he ran away. When Chris asks why Javi didn’t tell him and Maria, he responds, “‘I felt like a freak, Dad. My whole life I knew I was a boy—I just knew—and I thought eventually everyone else would realise it too. And I’m not talking about feeling like a boy. I’m talking about being a boy’. . . Ruth, gone but not dead. His daughter, now a son” (336). Javi is just an ordinary person finally becoming who he always felt he was. The Silent Daughter illustrates a relationship between the ability of crime fiction to reflect and influence social history, “including society’s abhorrent beliefs about gender stereotypes and sexuality” (Snider 1). Clair Snider has argued that “combining typical hegemonic masculine and feminine traits should not be feared and seen as destructive; instead, such a union should strengthen the characters and make them more dynamic individuals” (5). Christie’s debut novel indeed does a masterful job of queering gender stereotypes and sexualities by creating characters worthy of emotional investiture (Snider 5). Conclusion I agree with Snider’s conclusion that “it is pertinent for crime fiction to shift from reflecting social history to reflecting more modern and inclusive beliefs that can help society heal from the crimes it has endured while simultaneously changing society for the better” (7-8). The genre provides a forum to reflect upon society’s imperative for conformity and individuals’ choices for deviancy, what is considered necessary, and how society thinks about seeking justice. Scottish crime fiction writers, particularly, attempt to make sense of these issues in their works. Val Nelson 30 McDermid is quoted in an article in Publishers Weekly called “Kilt by Death: Scottish Crime Fiction & Mysteries 2014,” where she points out that Scots have “become obsessed with what drives the psyche to its extremes” and the black humor that “saves us from ourselves.” Author Stuart McBride attributes the Scottish concept of ‘thrawn’ which is, according to the Scots Language Centre, “frequently used with reference to stubbornness and absolute conviction,” as an explanation of the frequent contrarian nature of Scottish crime writers: “As a nation, we’re incredibly thrawn. Which basically means that if you tell us to do something we’ll generally do the complete opposite” (Foster). Indeed, according to writer Christopher Brookmyre, there is something else that makes Scottish crime fiction unique: “Generally speaking we tend towards a more socially aware kind of writing.” He also contends that “Scottish writers almost always place crime in a context that forces the protagonist to confront the social, economic and political factors that have given rise to the narrative’s events” (Foster). Therefore, to read crime fiction is to be privy to a culture’s most fundamental assumptions about life. 1979, The Second Cut, and The Silent Daughter are three crime novels concerned with personal relationships while expressing powerful anti-normative social commentary. Crime fiction “is extremely flexible and allows for all kinds of narratives that renegotiate gender and sexuality” (Hynynen 34), thus enabling McDermid, Welsh, and Christie to create novels that consistently push against the heteronormative and cisgender roles of traditional crime fiction, illustrate changing societal expectations and growing freedom in expressions of identity, and queer the crime committed that is central to crime fiction. In an additional layer, works of Nelson 31 Scottish crime fiction such as these three novels illuminate the tangled relations among national identity, crime, truth, justice, politics, gender, and sexual orientation. The transformation of the country and what it means to be Scottish has changed not only its people but also its literature. In the four decades since the vote for devolution in 1979, Scotland has transformed itself into a more open and softer version of itself, a queering of its national identity. Attitudes in Scotland about politics and society have changed post-devolution. Val McDermid, Louise Welsh, and Emma Christie have ensured that those changes are reflected in and continue to be inspired by Scottish crime fiction. Nelson 32 Works Cited Álvarez, Elena Avanzas. "Criminal Readings: The Transformative and Instructive Power of Crime Fiction." Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics Vol 42.4 (2019): 142-152. Anderson, Hephzibah. “Louise Welsh: ‘It was like driving with the lights off’.” The Guardian (online), Guardian News & Media Limited, Feb 8, 2022. www.proquest.com/blogs-podcastswebsites/louise-welsh-was-like-driving-with- lights-off/docview/2626497950/se-2?accountid=14940. Accessed 19 Feb 2022. Bailey, Frankie Y. "Crime Fiction." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology, 27, Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.29. Accessed 26 Feb 2022. Christie, Emma. The Silent Daughter. Welbeck, 2020. Crawford, James. “Dark Travellers: The Rise of Scottish Crime Writing.” YouTube, uploaded by Publishing Scotland, 20 Sep 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q2WZrr4J1o. Dewdney, Richard. Results of devolution Referendums (1979 & 1997). Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Library, 1997. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/rp97-113/. Accessed 11 Apr 2022. Foster, Jordan. "Kilt by Death: Scottish Crime Fiction & Mysteries 2014." Publishers Weekly (2014), 24, n/a. ProQuest. Web. Accessed 22 Nov 2021. Nelson 33 Hill, Lorna. "Bloody Women: How Female Authors Have Transformed the Scottish Contemporary Crime Fiction Genre." American, British and Canadian Studies 28 (2017): pp. 52-71. DOI: 10.1515/abcsj-2017-0004. Accessed 19 Feb 2022. Hynynen, Andrea. "Queer Readings of Crime Fiction." lambda nordica 23.1-2 (2018): 19-38. lambdanordica.org/index.php/lambdanordica/article/view/482. Accessed 19 Feb 2022. 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