EVERY country has its favourite sleuth.The fictional detective has just about replaced the folk hero in popular esteem.Certainly in popular readership.Ask your bookshop or library.Crime novels are sold or borrowed more than any other kind.Their protagonists usually reflect some concept typical of their homeland, and not necessarily realistic.England has that village shrewdie, little old Miss Marple, and America gave us hardboiled Mike Hammer and courtroom virtuoso Perry Mason.It is difficult to think of a land where there is no Great Detective of inimitable skill.France has world-weary Inspector Maigret, India the conscientious Inspector Ghote, Russia a defiant Inspector Renko, and China the inscrutable Charlie Chan.The latter was created in the 1920s by American Earl Derr Biggers while holidaying in Hawaii.Like Ghote (HRF Keating), Renko (Martin Cruz Smith) and Egypt's funny Mamur Zapt (Michael Pearce), the Chinese detective came from the pen of a foreigner.Scotland, where medical student Arthur Conan Doyle invented the very English Sherlock Holmes, sprouts mystery authors readily as heather.To randomly name a few and their creations. M.C.Beaton (Constable Hamish Macbeth), Glenn Chandler (tough Chief Inspector Taggart), Philip Kerr (Berlin's Bernie Gunther), Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana's Precious Ramotswe), Val McDermid (lesbian Lindsay Gordon), Denise Mina (journalist Paddy Meehan), Ann Morven (Australian balladeer Sheil B.Wright), Anne Perry (historical sleuths William and Hester Monk), Josephine Tey (Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard).There are many many more.I've just given those who come to mind as I write.With so many of them, now and in the past, "Bloody Scotland" has just announced, a Scottish Crime Writing Festival.This will be held in Stirling next year 2012, September 14-16.Needless to say it will promote Scots crime authors of all kinds, from home and abroad.And crimebusting characters, too, even if invented by sassenachs.Here's what Edinburgh writer Ian Rankin had to say last week. "Maybe it doesn't get the attention it deserves because it's not as though there's a school of Scottish crime writing.With the Scandinavians, you pretty much know what kind of novel you're going to get.But Scottish crime includes cozies, satire, hardboiled, noir, historical, urban, rural - there's a catholicism about it, and that's a strength not a weakness.What have they got that we haven't? Nothing - apart from some very good PR.Scottish crime writing continues to fire on all cylinders and talented new voices.".Nations and their differing sleuths is a theme I hope to explore in future blogs.Also their assorted make-believe villains.There is one investigator, however, who sets a precedent.To my knowledge, she is the first to solve whodunits in a variety of countries.Name. Sheil B.Wright, Australian singer of bush ballads.Her creator is Ann Morven, a Scot resident in Perth Australia.Happy reading! from Cathy Macleod, week ending 30 September 2011.
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