Stuart MacBride
Stuart MacBride was born in Dumbarton and raised in Aberdeen; abandoning his studies to become an architect, he went to work on the oil rigs, scrubbing toilets. He then tried out careers as an actor, a web designer, and a computer programmer, all the while writing away after work \u2013 he wrote four novels before his first, Cold Granite, was published in 2005. Since then, he\u2019s become one of our most successful and prolific crime writers, with twenty-four titles in all, sometimes labelled as \u201ctartan noir\u201d. His latest, about the hunt for a serial killer, is called No Less the Devil. Reviewers say things like \u201cthis isn\u2019t a novel to read over dinner\u201d, or \u201cslick, gruesome and brutally intelligent.\u201d Gruesome crime-writing apart, Stuart MacBride\u2019s other notable achievements include winning Celebrity Mastermind (his subject was A.A. Milne) and coming first in the World Stovies Championship.
In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stuart MacBride reveals how his \u201cvery dull\u201d childhood developed his imagination as a writer, and how he first discovered crime fiction in the Aberdeen public library. He went to the library every day, read under the covers at night, and borrowed new books the following morning, moving on from the Hardy Boys to Dashiell Hammett.
For Stuart MacBride, music is essential; he listens continually when he works, and his latest novel was written entirely to the soundtrack of Wagner\u2019s Ring. Alongside Wagner, choices include Beethoven, Purcell, Bruch and Holst. He also introduces music by the Australian composer Sean O\u2019Boyle, a concerto for didgeridoo, which he loves because it\u2019s so dark.
Produced by Elizabeth Burke\nA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3