William McIlvanney

William McIlvanney’s first novel, Remedy is None, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and with Docherty he won the Whitbread Award for Fiction. Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. Strange Loyalties, the third in the Detective Laidlaw trilogy, won the Glasgow Herald’s People’s Prize. He died in December 2015.



He’s not a copper who happens to be a man. He’s a man who happens to be a copper, and he carries that weight with him everywhere he goes.

The Dark Remains

Ian Rankin & William McIlvanney