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The first ever collection of Scottish crime fiction. Wow. What is it with the Scots? There are a certain number of whiners north of the ‛border’ who introduce Scotland into every conversation. Anti-English bigots who basically hate anything and anyone English. And for some reason this seems to create a tendency for ‛Scottish’ anthologies. There never seems to be any serious thought behind it. What’s the difference between Scottish culture and English culture anyway? As people, if we were dogs we’d be the same breed, and the same can be said for writing. Foreigners, even Americans, Canadians etc, often can’t tell the Scots apart from the English. And what century is this anyway? They can clear off as far as I’m concerned. Oh, hang on – they can’t, because most of them aren’t stupid. That noisy minority have a lot to answer for.

This has to be said, because while anthologies tend to be built around themes that are simply excuses for their existence, I simply do not see why we must have an anthology of new Scottish crime writing rather than an anthology of new crime writing. Maguire has form for this, apparently, having already gifted us Scottish Love Stories. And so we are stuck with this. I’ve been told not to go into too much detail about the contents for the sake of space, so let’s quickly cover the rest of the basics:

Something Wicked ranges near and far, including many shades of crime fiction, even stories about things that aren’t actually crimes. Many writers, some I don’t know and some I’ve read, e.g. Ian Rankin, Val McDermid. Women are well-represented, which makes a change for anthologies. Apart from the Scottish thing, this is an unusually well-balanced anthology all round.

So, Manda Scott, Joyce Galloway and Tony Black (good stories), Val McDermid (good story, interesting experiment with graffiti from a women’s toilet, good ending, surprised me), Christopher Brookmyre and Carol Anne Davis, rubbish. Most others are worth reading, or at least flicking through. Top picks: Ian Rankin’s revenge story (it isn’t news that Rankin can write a good story), and Denise Mina’s impressive paedophile story (which is news, I’d never heard of her, so this anthology does its job well in that regard). Patchy, as with most anthologies, but based on this I might check out Maguire’s previous. •

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