STAR INTERVIEW
Dark star
Crime bestseller Stuart MacBride explains how he writes dark tales with a light touch to Tina Jackson
Tina Jackson
TAP HERE To read an extract from No Less The Devil
Dark times produce dark fiction, so if any book is perfectly matched to the period it’s written in, it’s the fiendishly brilliant new novel by Scottish crime star Stuart MacBride. No Less the Devil is a hellish excursion into the realms of privilege where ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ are slippery, shape-shifting concepts.
Fittingly for the author of a book that so effectively scrambles its readers’ brains, Stuart has a reputation for playing with the truth in interviews with journalists, and WM wonders if he’s going to be tricksy to talk to. ‘Who told you that?’ he asks, amiably. It turns out that as well as being our star interview, he’s an absolute star, telling stories about the cats he and his wife Fiona have rescued, giving credence to the reputation that crime writers, who get all the darkness out in their fiction, have of being some of the friendliest and most engaging figures in the author community.
Still, there’s no hiding from the fact that No Less the Devil is a serial killer novel that explores the farthest reaches of dark, murky territory.
‘It all grew out of a short story I wrote several years ago,’ says Stuart. ‘I submitted the story and they went, it’s too dark, we can’t broadcast this.’
The story was about No Less the Devil’s lead character, Stuart’s DS Lucy McVeigh – anew detective for his first book for a new publisher, Transworld.
At the beginning of No Less the Devil she’s investigating a serial killer known as The Bloodsmith, at the same time as responding to calls for help from a child murderer who has recently been released from prison and is convinced a malevolent ‘They’ are after him.
‘The short story was basically the story of what happens to Lucy when she’s a child,’ says Stuart. ‘And it festered my brain. What would she be like when she grew up? What if she joined the police? And it festered away. And then we had the pandemic, and the way we seem to be ruled by this weird cabal of people who have very little aptitude for the jobs they’re doing. We don’t live in a meritocracy.’
To say Lucy is a complex character is an understatement, and going along with her takes the reader on a twisty, turny, ghost train of a ride. ‘I knew what she was like as a child, absolutely horrible – Iwas aware from the very beginning that different parts of her brain functioned in different ways so as an adult how would that manifest itself? Everything had to be real for her – it’s not a book where the narrator isn’t unreliable. You find out things is the same time they do.’