To label Willie, one of the greatest novelists of his era, a crime writer is to underestimate him – his true peers are Gogol and Dostoevsky
The great Scottish novelist William McIlvanney once described Glasgow as “The City of the Stare”. It was a place, he said, where you never know when to expect the next assault on your privacy. William, or Willie to all who knew him, died on Saturday after a short illness. Scotland has lost one of its genuine literary greats, and Glasgow, where he lived happily with his partner Siobhan, will miss him terribly.
Willie qualified to teach English and is still fondly regarded at the Ayrshire secondary school where he taught for several years before deciding to write full time. By then, his first novel, Remedy is None, had been published in a taste of the riches to come. His novels Docherty and The Big Man featured damaged, working class, male characters whose essential humanity and generosity could never quite be obscured by their flaws.
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