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I'm taking notes for future reading. Here's one I came across recently: Louise Welsh's The Cutting Room, Glasgow antiques auctioneer as detective. Dialect restricted to a few lines of dialogue, but nice location woek, though I no nothing beyond it about Glasgow's sexual underground. On late night tv I caught a strange film about University of Glasgow grad students rooming together in a dilapidated apartment who go bonkers and start doing each other in. Must be 15 years old. I should have written the title down. Ant lights go on? Mark At 08:41 AM 5/16/2005, you wrote: >Jill > > > Yes, I've read two of Brookmyre's novels - A Big Boy Did It and Ran > > Away - which would have to be one of the best title's ever and a jolly > > good read (though I read it sometime in late September 2001 which made > > me do a wee bit of a double take) - and The Secret Art of Stealing, > > which I enjoyed as well but thought it went a bit 'soft' somewhere > > along the line. > >Tut, tut, Jill (typical bloody woman, he muttered under his breath, misquote >at the drop of a handbag), it's +The Sacred [sic] Art of Stealing+ <g>. > >It was the first I read, and I'd agree with you that it goes a bit soggy, >though I find the beginning quite hysterically funny. And you're right, >that is set in Glasgow -- specifically begins with a bank job in Argyle >Street. The Glasgow-Pakistani policewoman heroine (and I seem to have >misplaced my copy for the moment and I can never remember her name) occurs >in Big Boy as well (and I think in one other novel, not sure on this >though), so you're right on this, both these are Glasgow. > >The Edinburgh ones feature the journalist Jack Parlabane. > > > To my completely uneducated ear they both seemed and claimed to be > > Glaswegian and The Secret Art ... told me all I needed to know, and > > quite a bit more, about the Celtic v Rangers thing. > ><g> That wee polis girl does tend to go on about the Old Firm, doesn't she? > > > Doesn't Brookmyre live, or once live in Aberdeen? D'you think that > > might explain something? Some of my lot did originally come from there, > > so I hope that's not stretching the noiceness too far. > >I know he worked as a journalist in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you >might be right about the Aberdeen connection. > >His homesite is here: > > http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/index.htm > >Anyone who wants a sense of what Jill and I are on about without actually >going out to buy a book might check this: > > http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/bampota.htm > >(It's the first of the Parlabane Stories, Jill, and also sort-of a seed for >The Whatsit of Stealing.) > >Then there's Ian Rankin and the Rebus novels, and those certainly *are* >Edinburgh -- lots of detail about the city, and linguisticaly light, not >dialect. > >Robin