Hard as Nails..

WITH STONE-COLD CLASSICS Two-Way Split and Kiss Her Goodbye Scottish author Allan Guthrie earned his stripes in style. As his latest novel, Hard Man hit the streets The Pusher collared Guthrie, put a head-lock on him, found out just how hard he really is . . .

The Pusher: The Pusher's read Hard Man, and bruddah, it's blacker than a dog's guts . . . is it your darkest novel to date, Al?

Allan Guthrie: Kiss Her Goodbye is my darkest novel in terms of subject matter - incest, rape, suicide - Hard Man is dark, too, but it’s also very funny. I hope.

TP: I think the readers deserve and outline of the book, yeah?

AG: Pearce, a time-served Edinburgh hard man, is still recovering from the loss of his mother when he’s invited by the dysfunctional Baxter family to protect their pregnant 16-year-old daughter from Wallace, her 26-year-old husband. Having found out that the baby’s not his, Wallace – a man with a reputation for violence – has sworn vengeance. Pearce declines the job cause he’s no babysitter. But when Wallace kills Pearce’s dog, he goes too far. It’s deeply personal, and Pearce is forced to confront him. After a very physical confrontation, events take an extremely bizarre turn.

TP: The Pusher's came across his share of wiseguys and hard men in his day, and this guy, Pearce, he's hard, no question.

AG: Pearce, the book’s protagonist, fancies himself as a hard man but he’s too dumb and too emotionally fragile. Wallace, the psychotic husband, could be said to be the book’s main hard man. But he’s no match for my choice as to the book’s real hard man: May, the daughter. Or maybe Hilda, the dog. It’s a toss-up.

TP: Oh yeah, the dog, The Pusher don't like dogs none too much, specially those with the sharp snouts, always sniffin' around for trouble . . . usually mine! Why you got a dog featuring so heavily in Hard Man, Al?

AG: Hard Man features a number of animals. Birds, hamsters, flatfish. But one of the main characters is a three-legged Dandie Dinmont terrier called Hilda. Pearce is something of a loner. He used to be close to his sister, but she died. He spent ten years in prison. Soon after he came out, his mother died, leaving him with no family. He moved to Portobello, not far from the Seafield Cat and Dog Home. He’s always liked dogs, cause they’re a lot easier to get on with than people. So he visits the Cat and Dog Home and comes away with Hilda. Even though the dog’s male, he names it Hilda after his mother.

TP: You eh, got one of them dogs y'self . . . I'm thinking I might have to watch what I carry round your place?

AG: One dog and that’s enough responsibility, so no kids. For the record, we used to own a masturbating hamster. And I’ve never had sex with a flatfish.

TP: The Pusher don't judge a man on his priors, Al. Okay. Okay. Lets, move on, huh? Tell me about the real Allan Guthrie.

AG: I’m teetotal and a vegetarian, which is sometimes a surprise to people who meet me expecting me to resemble one of the characters in my books. I’m really quite normal. My imagination has some serious kinks in it, that’s all.

TP: So there's no dark side to Allan Guthrie?

AG: There is a dark side to Allan Guthrie, but only at the weekends. I try not to kill people during the week.

TP: Always good to have a policy, Al . . . The Pusher don't kill no-one on St Patrick's Day, outta respect for my grandmother from Wales. But, you write noir, though, that's pretty dark, right?

AG: Noir fiction is hard to define. Many have tried, and many have failed. I’d be a fool to give it a shot, so here goes: noir is horror without the supernatural. I think that definition works particularly well for Hard Man.

TP: The Pusher has his own reasons for liking a good crime yarn - I can't talk about those so don't ask, Al - but why do you think people get so interested in crime? And why's your home town, Edinburgh, always produced so many good crime writers?

AG: The crime genre is massive. It always has been, I think, although it hasn’t always had a label. I think of certain Greek Tragedies as early noir. A lot of Jacobean drama, too. I’d call Dostoyevsky a crime writer. Conrad and Camus wrote noir. Much of US Depression-era fiction is noir. Stevenson and Hogg wrote noir.

People have always been, and always will be, interested in murder – whether it’s who the killer is, or what motivated the killing – and with some great crime writers working in the field these days, readers have an abundance of great books to choose from.

As for the wealth of crime writers in Edinburgh, I wonder if those of us who weren’t born here are lured here by the Gothic. I always find the Old Town inspirational. I can’t help but wonder how many stories are locked away among all those closes and wynds.

I try not to think about writers who came before me when I’m writing myself. If I did, given the abundance of literary talent Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, has bestowed upon the world, I wouldn’t be able to get as much as a sentence written.

TP: You were lured to the Smoke . . . you were born and raised on Orkney, a small Scottish Island, right?

AG: I live in Portobello [near Edinburgh] which is about the same size as Kirkwall, where I grew up, with a view across the Forth. I’ve always struggled when I’ve lived in places where I can’t see the sea, and I’ve no doubt that’s because of my island upbringing.

TP: Could you have written crime back on the island . . . I'm thinking not too many heists go down there?

AG: Crime novels can be set anywhere, even on Orkney. Naturally the context has

to change to accommodate reality – but Cain and Abel proved that it doesn’t take

a large urban population for nefarious deeds to be done! All you need is a garden

and a femme fatale.

TP: So, did writing always appeal to you, even growing up on the island?

AG: I haven’t always wanted to be a writer. I started off wanting to be one, but

once I realised how hard it was, I thought: who am I kidding? Seven or eight

years ago, I came back to it and decided to have a real go. Funnily enough,

I’m still thinking: who am I kidding?

TP: The Pusher hears you had a lot of trouble getting into print - at one stage, you were close to giving up - that true?

AG: It can become disheartening when you receive rejection letter after rejection letter, which is the experience for most of us. At one stage, I wondered if maybe all these rejection letters meant that I wasn’t destined to be a writer. So, as a final fling before embarking on a computer course that was going to take up all my spare time, I decided to enter the Debut Dagger, an annual competition for best unpublished novel run by the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain.

After entering the competition, I stopped writing and started the computing course, as planned. But a few months later I received notification that I’d been shortlisted for the Dagger. That was the first objective response I’d had that suggested I might be able to write after all. And as a result, my focus shifted back to writing. That was in 2001, but it was still another three years before I found a publisher for the book. I do think that stubbornness and resilience are lesser known character traits that are extremely useful for a writer.

TP: But you hit it big when you finally did break through – that surprise you?

AG: I was delighted at the critical response to Two-Way Split and Kiss Her Goodbye, which between them have made the shortlist for four major writing awards. Much of the credit for the success of the books has to go to the publishers. In the US, PointBlank Press and Hard Case Crime did a terrific job. And in the UK, Polygon, who are based in Newington in Edinburgh, have been absolutely superb in producing great-looking books and on spreading the word.

TP: You're now a commissioning editor, agent, and web master and encouraging new writers to break through – The Pusher takes his hat off to you on this score, hey, we're in the same business, we just got different day jobs is all.

AG: I try to help new writers whenever I can. Unfortunately as a commissioning editor, a literary agent, and a writer, I don’t have a great deal of spare time. But I do find that sometimes I’ll offer editorial advice on a piece of writing that’s been sent to me via my website and it clicks with the writer. I love nothing better than when that happens. Of course, sometimes I get the opposite response, but I still think it’s worth offering my advice for those who want it and feel they can benefit from it.

TP: In your time you've been compared to some of the best, I'm right?

AG: The most frequent comparisons I hear are that of Ian Rankin and Irvine Welsh. Both of which comparisons are extremely flattering. They’re two stunningly good writers. I do wonder if there’s a crime writer in Scotland who hasn’t been compared to Ian Rankin, though, so I take what I hear with a big pinch of salt. As for Irvine Welsh, yes, there are similarities in our leaning towards the transgressive, but again it’s reach-for-the-salt-shaker time.

TP: What other writers do it for you, Al?

AG: Christopher Brookmyre is another writer who’s an undoubted influence. I was blown away by his Edinburgh-set debut novel and have remained a big fan ever since. Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Louise Welsh are all class acts. And up in Aberdeen, Stuart MacBride’s doing some great stuff. I owe a huge debt to Edinburgh native Philip Kerr, who’s written some stand-out work. And Iain Banks, of course, for proving that a dark imagination can co-exist with a sense of humour.

TP: Talking of writers, when can The Pusher expect a short story from you, Al?

AG: I have four new books coming out in the UK within the next twelve months, so I'm fairly busy with those, but hang on in there. I find short stories hard to write but they can be a lot of fun.

PUSH-UPS:

Allan Guthrie gives The Pusher three of the best . . .

1 - Ray Banks' Donkey Punch. Out in May. Class novel about the amateur boxing world by a class writer from Kirkcaldy.

2 - Adam Bissett's The Incredible Adam Spark. Magnificent novel about a 17-year-old from Falkirk with learning difficulties who works in a fast food restaurant and believes he has superpowers.

3 - Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Extraordinarily modern piece of writing, both in style and content. Amazing to think this was pre-Freud.

:: Visit Allan Guthrie's website Noir Originals ... here