There’s been a murder!
There’s been another murder!
There’s been a triple murder!
No, we
hadn’t gathered together on an unseasonal April evening to discuss
Taggart, the longest running crime drama on UK television, but the
Scottish literary sensation shortlisted for the Booker prize of 2016.
However, this was not so much a ‘whodunnit’ but rather a ‘whydunnit’ as
the perpetrator was known from page one. Was Roddy Macrae guilty as
charged or were his actions guided either by mental instability or
somehow justified by the social conditions of his time? Told as a
collection of unreliable accounts; from Roddy himself, his legal team,
expert (or not so expert) medical witnesses, his neighbours in the
village, and even the popular press, we were asked to assemble these
disparate accounts to form an understanding of the mind of a murderer,
of contemporary society, of the role of the media, of mid-19th
century thinking on psychology and the vagaries of the Scottish legal
system. Phew! Fortunately, your scribe had two bottles of Scottish ale
with him to stimulate the ‘grey matter’.
Intent on
preparing for the cut and thrust of literary discussion, and distracted
in opening an ale, your scribe regained attention to find an animated
discussion of hats. He recorded mention of stetsons, deerstalkers,
panamas, fedoras, bowlers, a fez, top hats, berets, bobbles, flat caps
and so it went on. Apparently hats “maketh the man”. (Shouldn’t that be
manners? Ed.) One of our number was once known as ‘Digger’ because he
had once worn an Australian hat (with corks?). I opened my copy of the
book but couldn’t find the significance of hats in the plot or character
development, so I wondered what prompted this debate. We moved ahead.
The proposer
explained his book choice. Brought up in Dingwall and a frequent
visitor to Applecross, he felt an affinity of place. His great
grandfather worked as a ground officer on a large estate in Sutherland, a
little bit like the constable. On a positive note he liked the layout
of the book as found documents and the clever writing which made the
events seem real. The characters came across strongly although some were
possibly rather stereotyped. The description of the hard life of the
crofters contrasted strongly with the privileged on the estate. With
medical background, he enjoyed the seemingly accurate details of the
post mortem and the discussion of criminal anthropology, a “science”
which has since been discredited. In today’s milieu, he suggested that
Roddy’s behaviour could have been seen as autistic. On the negative
side, he thought some of the description of the murders overly detailed
and macabre, the sexual mutilation sketched over. The beauty of the area
wasn’t remarked – of course, we can enjoy the scenery on a fine day but
it is a different proposition if one has to scrape a living from the
poor land.
He also
sketched a few details of GMBs life. Born in 1969 in Kilmarnock, he
pursued a conventional middle class development to read English at
Glasgow University In 1999 he took a degree in International Security
Studies at St Andrews, but the seeds of creative writing had been sown.
Yet, when he won 2013 Scottish Book Trust New Writers award, he did not
to take up their offer of mentoring, feeling he should develop his own
ideas through His Bloody Project, his second novel. In interviews (e.g.
Glasgow Herald) he has cited a debt to Simenon and acknowledges the
influence of Kafka, (“There are no regulations. You might as well ask to
see the air we breathe… The regulations exist because we all accept
that they exist.”). He talks too of the similarities with Hogg
(Confessions of a Justified Sinner) and of the influence of an 1835
French Murder (a Frenchman called Pierre Riviere, who brutally murdered
his mother, his sister and brother with a pruning hook.
The floor was open to general discussion.
First, we
echoed the proposer in praising the depiction of the hard existence in
highland crofting communities, at the mercy of the weather, the poor
soil, the laird, the church, permanently in rent arrears, the difficulty
of creating, let alone profiting from selling excess produce. The local
people of Culduie are ridiculed by the landed gentry at the local
market and unfairly depicted as a sub-species by both the press and the
medical profession. It is amusing, if not atypical, that the villagers
of Culduie themselves find someone to look down on in the slovenly,
wanton inhabitants of the shoreline village of Aird Dubh. We enjoyed the
sparse, simple prose and felt the book gave psychological; and social
insight into the mid-19th century highland land and living.
Criticisms
started to emerge. First, one member talked of a recent Restoration
murder mystery he had read in which a woman was accused of being both a
murderer and a witch, “An Instance of the Fingerpost” set in Oxford in
the 1660s by Iain Pears and published in 1988. Dealing with a similar
theme, the difficulty of ascertaining the truth of an event through
contradictory accounts and evidence, he felt that HBP paled by
comparison. He talked of the rather unappealing character of the father.
He was disappointed that there was no twist in the tail, that there was
no real development of plot ( … unlike Taggart which developed the same
plot more than 100 times! Ed.). He found the prose dull and
unremarkable. He quoted a review of the book he had found that
complained of a miserable book describing miserable people in a
miserable setting, leading cribbed and confined lives. While not going
that far, he could see the reviewer’s point. Finally he said he had
trouble believing the crofter’s boy could write; this did not ring true.
That Roddy can produce such a well written if unreliable document is
surprising to many, and this view was reinforced by another member.
A rebuttal
was attempted. Far from being a criticism, the success of the author in
depicting such ‘miserable’ lives should be viewed as a success not a
failure. Indeed, to the external observer the existence is miserable and
certainly stripped to the bare bones when compared to a cosmopolitan
existence in Edinburgh or even Inverness. Of course, our own perception
of what is important in life may be viewed as arrogant in comparison
with a more basic set of values. As regards the authenticity of the
accounts, the device of unreliable narrator may be clichéd, but is Roddy
capable of the narrative? This is an interesting point, despite the
influence of the schoolmaster. However, the preface considers the point
while maintaining the ‘faction’ that these are found documents –
acknowledging that no-one actually saw Roddy write anything, and the
possibility that Andrew Sinclair wrote or assisted in large part could
not be dismissed. It is not just Roddy that displays unexpected talent.
Indeed James Bruce Thomson is also rather taken with the charms of
Carmina Murchison, “clearly a woman of some education”, perhaps acquired
in Kyle of Lochalsh.
What of plot
development and twists? Is the book dull? This raises interesting
questions as to what extent an author should embellish the truth to
improve such development; indeed, “embellishment” is a common complaint
in recent UK TV dramas that relate to recent real events (e.g. ‘The
Moorside’, shown in February 2017 to similar critical acclaim) but in
these cases the living can contest it. Who complains of embellishment in
“Wolf Hall”? Of course in this case, there is no real problem of
altering facts as there are no facts. Hence, some of our number felt
that the plot should have been strengthened while others felt that the
illusion of fact was well maintained by the well written prose. The jury
in Inverness may have decided Roddy’s fate, but the book club jury is
still split.
Although our
medical advisor was well content with the relevant research, our legal
consultant was less pleased, citing major flaws in the handling of the
defence and trial in particular. First, the exact designation of Andrew
Sinclair was called into question. Referred to primarily as an advocate,
e.g. in the opening line “I am writing this at the behest of my
advocate, Mr Andrew Sinclair”, and hence able to represent his client in
a high court in 1869, the letter of appeal for clemency is signed “Mr
Andrew Sinclair esq., Solicitor to the Prisoner”. Is this a basic error
by the author? There was some discussion of the use of the words
advocate and solicitor in the more general sense, but this issue was not
satisfactorily explained.
Further, he
felt that the lack of preparedness of Andrew Sinclair with regard to his
only witness’s testament fell somewhat short of professional standards.
In mitigation, it was pointed out that this witness had a somewhat
arrogant and opinionated view of lower classes, manifest in his visit to
“the well” at Culduie, and might have been difficult to work with.
Further, Mr Sinclair was hardly well practiced in cases of this
magnitude. Certainly, the lawyer was not prepared, but is this not
believable? Talking of alternative strategies, in addition to the issue
of insanity, could he have better selected the jury and mounted a
defence of mitigation based on social injustice? Whether such social
injustice justifies violent action all too pertinent. Alas, the letter
of clemency was too little, too late. There was also some discussion of
the general preparedness of lawyers in general but to avoid litigation,
we won’t record it!
We returned
to the allegedly weak ending. Certainly, it lacked the aforementioned
twist that is so often present in current crime writing, where obvious
suspects are introduced then discarded until some previously unforeseen
motive is suddenly introduced to explain the crime. Could there have been a more subtle twist based on his mental state or status as representative of his class? Should there
have been a more subtle twist based on his mental state or status as
representative of his class? The ‘contemporary’ witness statements, the
prisoner’s account, the press cuttings, the medical evidence, all
combine to paint an ambiguous picture of the accused. At the end, the
verdict seems justified on the basis of the evidence, but the group
remained split on whether the author had been too devoted to the
“factual” narrative at the expense of suspense and surprise.
Our earliest
critic added to his theme. There is no-one to care about in the book.
He suggested that we can only empathise with characters that have some
aspiration or goal. In real life, people do not always have aspirations.
Roddy was seemingly content to live out his life tending to the croft,
and had no apparent interest in pursuing a more enticing challenge
through education, and had no real interest in going to Glasgow. None of
the other characters seemed to seize the opportunity presented. Could
this have been the start of a glittering change of career for Andrew
Sinclair? This discussion seems to echo the ‘twist’ in that some thought
the author was skillfully maintaining the illusion of a factual and
accurate account and others thought he had a responsibility to add the
extraordinary to the ordinary life to create outstanding literature.
Finally we
turned to humour. Again some found it lacking, but others enjoyed the
satirical portrayal of the various professions, e.g. the contrasting
evidence of Munro and Thomson, and of the several journalists who seemed
to like a drink, surely a savage libel on an honourable profession as
anyone in Jinglin’ Geordie’s (an Edinburgh hostelry) will assure you on a
Friday evening. The exchanges between Sinclair and the various
witnesses in particular seemed often amusing. No? Not everyone was
convinced. Roddy’s new companion, Archibald Ross is described as one
whose appearance “caused a great deal of mirth” but on this at least we
all agreed. We felt Ross was rather out of place in the general cast,
although he would no doubt enliven the film version with his visual
japes.
And so we
concluded. A straw poll suggested two members very much in favour, three
lukewarm (“I gave it three stars on GoodReads”) and one definitely
against. Oh well, first there is a failure to win the Booker prize, then
failure to achieve unanimous approbation from the Monthly Book Group.
We look forward to the next novel.
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