ONE of Scotland’s greatest living writers, William McIlvanney (Picture: Robert Perry), has claimed that Taggart, the iconic Glasgow detective, was inspired by his most famous character.

McIlvanney believes that the hard-nosed investigator — famous for the phrase “there’s been a murrrder” — is based on Jack Laidlaw, the brooding, sardonic detective who made his first appearance in the book of the same name in 1977.

Taggart’s debut was six years later in a three-part television serial called Killer, written by the Edinburgh-born author Glenn Chandler.

McIlvanney says a source at Scottish Television called him to tell him about the similarities before Killer was broadcast: “I was phoned by a guy in the light entertainment department. He said, ‘There’s this thing called Killer. In your book the body’s found in Kelvin Park, in this it’s found in Kelvin Walk. Somebody’s just moved the body, Willie. Have you got a lawyer?’ “And I spoke to a lawyer. He said it was very difficult to prove theft of ideas. He said, ‘It could be two years before it comes to trial, and in that time you wouldn’t sleep too well. If you won, you’d get half a million or something. If you lost, your life would be over because you’d have to pay all the costs’. I thought it was too big a risk.

“It’s all water under the bridge now and I don’t have any bitterness, but I’m convinced that it’s difficult to claim there’s no connection.“

Chandler said he was astonished by McIlvanney’s claim. He said he had suggested the series be set in Edinburgh and that it was inspired not by contemporary Scottish fiction, but by Agatha Christie novels.

“When I started writing Taggart I hadn’t even heard of McIlvanney. I hadn’t read his books, and in fact I still haven’t read them to this day,” said Chandler.

“I knew so little about writing whodunits that I went off and read about 25 books by Agatha Christie. That was my knowledge of crime writing, so I was extremely surprised when this guy (McIlvanney) popped up.”

Chandler, who was living in London, visited Glasgow to complete his research. “Before I wrote Taggart I knew nothing about Glasgow. I had to take a crash course. I went round pubs and sat talking to people to get a feel for the vernacular.

“All the names for the characters came from Glasgow cemeteries, with the exception of Livingstone, which just popped into my head as a good name for a detective.

“I wasn’t one of those guys that grew up in a Glasgow tenement. If I had done, I’d probably have written something completely different.”

Ian Rankin, creator of the Inspector Rebus crime novels, said that he owes McIlvanney a debt of gratitude: “I met him in 1985 and told him I was writing about an Edinburgh detective inspired by Laidlaw. It was great to have someone like him writing crime fiction because it validated it to me.”

Rankin said there were only limited similarities between Taggart and Laidlaw, but that McIlvanney was unlucky not to have been given more credit.

McIlvanney won the 1975 Whitbread Prize for Docherty, about working-class life in Kilmarnock before the first world war. Weekend, his first novel in 10 years, will be launched at Edinburgh’s International Book Festival next week.

Article by Karin Goodwin, The Sunday Times, August 13, 2006

See:
   Something for the Weekend (William McIlvanney)
   McIlvanney: Novel perspective on the human condition (Allan Massie)
   McIlvanney: a Writer’s life (Stuart Kelly)
   McIlvanney: Lost and found (Susan Mansfield)
   McIlvanney: Socialism, dialect and a lot of ice-cream (Diane MacLean)
   McIlvanney: Reeling and writhing (Carol Birch)