Tartan Noir

Without getting bogged down in the nit-picking minutiae of whether Tartan Noir is a separate genre, a style or simply a clever publicist's spur of the moment slogan that has persisted in the lexicon of marketing, let us contemplate the underlying significance of tartan noir.

First, let me give a very brief definition of tartan noir. It is of course related to Scottish literature and the noir part relates to its content. Although we have noir, neo-noir and probably some other noir-like terms, the generally accepted definitions relate to cynical, highly-driven characters often of extreme moral ambivalence. Noir films were originally the grade B masterpieces made with one camera, unique angles, night-for-night shooting, low budgets, etc. All streets were rain-soaked, all alleys were dead-ends, all dames were gin-soaked temptresses that lead a man to his doom, all cops were crooked, all good deeds went soundly punished!

Tartan noir carries some of this hardboiled realism to a bit more of an extreme. The duality of good and evil in the same character is a treatment that is worthy of Dostoevsky. Take one part Dostoevsky, two parts ultra police-procedural novel literary techniques, throw in some kilts, bagpipes, heather and the dark and dangerous Moors by misty moonlight and you've got tartan noir.

So whats so special about tartan noir and how does it related to the JonBenet Ramsey murder. Well, of course I'm not sure at all but its occasionally interesting to engage in some fanciful speculation about the case since we certainly are not hearing about any real progress in the case. Tartan Noir? Well, particularly with some authors there is a greater emphasis on alternative sexual lifestyles and practices. There seems to be a much greater acceptance of the presence of torture and certainly a greater acceptance of extended and vividly descriptive discussions of torture and depravity. There is also a greater tolerance of malfeasance amongst those in authority. Even the hero can be depicted as a habitual and remorseless thief as long as he eventually arrests the murderer. There is a greater tolerance in tartan noir for an authority figure to act based upon personal motives and to have personal involvement in a case. At least in the United States the phrase good for it is considered to embrace the likelihood of obtaining a conviction rather than the concept of being factually guilty. I've no idea which sense of the phrase was in the mind of Steve Thomas when he said that Patsy Ramsey was good for it. In tartan noir it seems that a police officer having base motives is perfectly acceptable and the phrase good for it might well be explicitly shown mean convictable rather than factually guilty.

So what is the significance of a branch of literature boldly grasping areas heretofore relegated to books sold only in plain brown wrappers? I'm not sure. Perhaps authors in lonely hamlets on the Scottish Moor have nothing better to do on cold nights but fire up peoples imaginations with frank descriptions of sexually motivated torture. Perhaps as a society we are becoming more accepting of such literary passages. Perhaps authors are simply realizing that more and more cases seem to relate to sexual torture and that the marketplace is indeed a reflection of our society.

Perhaps we can describe all literature as escapist but in reality we usually reserve that term for the utterly absurd and fanciful world of such things as James Bond with his gadgets and girls galore. Tartan noir literature may be escapist to some degree but let us take a closer look at the stock characters sent over from Central Casting. Detectives are often middle aged rather than young and handsome. They often have career-advancement blocking mistakes on their records and are riddled with doubt as to their situations and actions. Their personal lives are often a complete mess and distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys is not that easy a task. In Tartan Noir good does not mean admirable. At most good seems to mean not so blatantly bad. And in tartan noir good perhaps merely means equally bad but not yet discovered to be bad or at least not yet prosecuted for being bad. In some tartan noir works the detective hero is a shoo fly, that is, a cop assigned to internal affairs and therefore a much-hated and socially isolated character. Often we've seen such themes involving social isolation before. William Goldman's No Way To Treat A Lady was a novel that when turned into a film script was totally gutted of its impact and meaning. In the novel the police officer had been hideously scarred when his inebriated mother mis-treated his face after it had been injured by hot grease from her kitchen stove. The movie cast some handsome matinee idol as the detective and totally excised any mention of his childhood injury by his mother. Now for those of you who perhaps neither read the novel nor saw the movie, let me briefly state that of course the plot involves some demented serial killer who was psychologically injured by his mother and who goes around town killing women who remind him of his mother. In the novel, the killer becomes intrigued by the detective in charge of tracking him down and the killer eventually targets and kills the detective's new found girl friend, a Park Avenue socialite who has become tired of The Beautiful People and who accepts her detective-boyfriend with his physical and emotional scars. In keeping with the watered-down version, the movie has the girlfriend being attracted to a handsome detective and surviving her attack by the serial killer. The entire thrust of the novel is that when it comes to the end, each of the two men had psyches that were severely warped by their mothers, but the killer's cruelty paled in comparison to the cop's cruelty. The movie on the other hand was merely a comic thriller in which a cop meets a beautiful young and wealthy woman while tracking down a killer. The movie features only modest and comical hints or suggestions about the detective's relationship with his mother. In No Way To Treat A Lady the detective's personality defects are a subtle theme in the novel but in tartan noir there is nothing subtle about the dark and evil side of the heroes. Emphasis is on darkness, duality and depravity. The world is a sea of evil. And such evil is readily embraced.

So what do we have? Something really new in the world of literature? Or simply much hullabaloo about something new merely to spark sales? I don't know. We have had duality of good and evil in mystery books for a long time. The hallmark of Tartan Noir is its union with depravity or at least that which used to be somewhat universally viewed as depravity. Has our world become such an altered reality that graphic and prolonged descriptions of torture are becoming expected? Or is it simply that the world of royalty-hungry authors has changed? Are readers lapping up an ersatz realism or an actual realism? In tartan noir it is perfectly acceptable to have a police officer involved in an investigation despite his personal relationships mandating recusal in the real world. So does tartan noir embrace exaggerated activities involving police malfeasance? Or does tartan noir merely embrace a new acceptance of the real world of police malfeasance? After all, it was in the real world that a Scottish official in charge of inspecting police forces came to public attention when he lost his identity card during a mugging near a prostitution zone and was later indicted for offenses that resulted in two innocent defendants spending a decade in prison. It may therefore be that tartan noir's acceptance of improper police conduct is simply an acceptance of a real world situation.

Torture, depravity, ethical conflicts, unpunished malfeasance by the police. Is it tartan noir, the evening news or the JonBenet Ramsey case?