Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish author Allan Guthrie.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Allan Guthrie is a Scottish literary agent, author and editor of crime fiction. He was born in Orkney, but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life. His first novel, Two-Way Split, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award, and it won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2007. His second novel, Kiss Her Goodbye, was nominated for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, and a Gumshoe Award.
Writing books that people want to read is helpful - my most successful book is my only police procedural, a very popular subgenre of the very popular crime fiction genre.
Maybe it's the buildings, maybe it's the weather, but you can see it affects us - that Scottish gallows humour; our tendency towards bleakness, to look at things in a negative way. Those definitely come out in my writing.
Some authors are quite happy - and have the time - to do it all themselves, which is great.
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 managed to fit most of the writing to evenings and weekends, and my wife has been very supportive.
It's possible to be hard-boiled and not noir, just as it's possible to be noir and not hard-boiled. And it is possible to be both. People debate endlessly what is hard-boiled and what is noir.
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.
A number of people have read 'Two-Way Split' and made certain assumptions about what the author's like, and I'm highly disappointing to them. I don't drink, I don't eat meat; that's very disappointing for a hard-boiled writer.
Noir focuses on the criminal mind, not a whodunit: more why they did it and will they get away with it. The abnormal psychology is what fascinates me rather than the puzzle-solving aspect.
There is a dark side to Allan Guthrie, but only at the weekends.
I'm really quite normal. My imagination has some serious kinks in it, that's all.
I like to walk when I can. Otherwise, it's the bus - while we still have them.
I took an MA course in creative writing a couple of years back, and I was definitely in the bottom of the class.
Music was something I was encouraged to do, which I appeared to be quite good at, but it was never a passion. Writing was always my first love.