Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Song of the Dead
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1964
WEBSITE: http://www.douglaslindsay.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Scottish
http://www.douglaslindsay.com/index.asp?pageid=39942 * http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13095827.Meet_the_author__Douglas_Lindsay/ * http://www.crimefictionlover.com/2014/07/interview-douglas-lindsay/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nb 98085171
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nb98085171
HEADING: Lindsay, Douglas, 1964-
000 00420nz a2200145n 450
001 2305052
005 19990227080625.6
008 981026n| acannaabn |n aaa c
010 __ |a nb 98085171
035 __ |a (DLC)nb 98085171
040 __ |a Uk |c Uk
100 10 |a Lindsay, Douglas, |d 1964-
670 __ |a The long midnight of Barney Thomson, 1999: |b t.p. (Douglas Lindsay) p. opp. t.p. (born 1964 in Scotland)
953 __ |a xx00
985 __ |c BL |e LSPC
PERSONAL
Born 1964, in Lanarkshire, Scotland; married Kathryn; children: Jessica, Hamish.
EDUCATION:University of Glasgow, B.Sc.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Previously, worked for the Scottish Ministry of Defense; was part of the U.K. delegation to NATO.
AVOCATIONS:Playing piano and guitar, listening to music, watching sports and movies.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short stories to publications, including Xenos. Titles from “Barney Thomson” series have been translated into German and Italian.
The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson was adapted for film, 2015.
SIDELIGHTS
Douglas Lindsay is a Scottish writer. Before he began writing books, he worked for the Scottish Ministry of Defense and was part of the United Kingdom’s delegation to NATO. While working with the delegation in Brussels, he met Kathryn, to whom he would later be married. Lindsay moved with her to Senegal, where she was sent for a work assignment. While there, he began writing novels. He told Calum Macdonald, a writer for the Herald Scotland Online: “I had a B.Sc. from Glasgow University and worked for the MoD [Ministry of Defense] in Glasgow and for NATO in Brussels before we moved to Africa. There, I had the choice between filling my days on the golf course and drinking G&T, or doing something I would enjoy. My favourite subject at school had been English, so writing was an obvious way to go.”
The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson
The first book Lindsay wrote while living in Africa was The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, the first volume in a series featuring Thomson, a struggling barber who, through a series of unexpected events, becomes a serial killer. Lindsay sold the film rights for the book, and a movie version of the work, called The Legend of Barney Thomson, was released in 2015. The film’s director is Robert Carlyle, who also plays the character of Barney in the film. Other stars include Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jenson, and Martin Compston.
In an interview with Jenny Morrison, a contributor to the Scotland Daily Record Online, Lindsay stated: “When I signed over the rights for the film many years ago, I knew there was a chance that, instead of my lead character Barney being a dour barber from Glasgow, the screenplay might have been so completely rewritten that he ended up being a basketball player in Australia. The possibility of the book being turned into a film has been going on for so long now that I was ready for whoever finally made the film to do anything. But these guys have been very faithful to my story, which is great.” Lindsay continued: “And speaking to Robert, it was clear how important to him it was that Glasgow was very much part of the film.” An omnibus edition of the “Barney Thomson” series was published as The Barbershop 7 in 2013.
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
In an interview with Keith Nixon, a contributor to the Crime Fiction Lover Web site, Lindsay described his 2014 stand-alone novel, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, which takes its title from a song on the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He told Nixon: “First off I can’t really say it’s a crime novel. However, there’s no question that there’s an underlying feeling of transgression. The main character is locked up and interrogated, so that he comes to the point where he begins to think he’s done something wrong. It’s a bit of a surrealist head-scratcher of a novel, part of its surreal quality being this air of wrongdoing.” In the same interview with Nixon, Lindsay discussed putting his “Barney Thomson” series aside in order to write the book. He stated: “It’s fun to get away from it. To do the weirdness without the body count. That’s what Mr. Kite is.”
In the book, James Kite is the sole survivor of a plane crash on a Los Angeles-bound flight. He is sent to Scotland, where he is questioned relentlessly by American investigators. They believe he may have had something to do with the plane crash. They lock him away in a building, where he continues to be interrogated. Kite begins losing his notions of time and space. The volume takes a surrealist turn, finding Kite in countries throughout the world, including Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Scotland, and the United States. He fears an entity called the Jigsaw man. References to the Beatles appear in this section of the book. B.A. East reviewed Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! on the Books & News Web site. East suggested: “The book works because Kite and Jones, No-Name and Crosskill—even the elusive Jigsaw Man—are imbued with the necessary humanity. Prepare to fall in love again with the Beatles, and to learn which one was the coolest. Prepare for great irony: Paul is dead? Sure, you’re thinking, I know. I saw him die at the Olympic opening ceremony. … Prepare, most of all, for a nightmare that’s all the more frightening because it’s real.”
Song of the Dead
Song of the Dead is another stand-alone novel from Lindsay. Its protagonist is a detective inspector in Scotland named Ben Westphall. Previously, he worked as a spy, traveling to locations throughout the world on various assignments. Westphall left the spy trade after a plane crash nearly killed him. Westphall now avoids flying, so when he must travel to Estonia for work, he ferries his car to the mainland and drives there. He is sent to Estonia to determine whether or not a man named John Baden is alive. Baden is supposed to have died more than a decade ago, but there are reports that show he is still living. He turns up in Tartu, Estonia, claiming to have been held hostage by a group involved in sex trafficking and organ dealing. Westphall begins investigating Baden’s claims and determines that he is, in fact, telling the truth. Westphall then begins poring over the previous report of Baden’s death, scrutinizing the DNA evidence included in it. He finds that Baden’s DNA matches that of a corpse found in a lake near Russia twelve years earlier.
Don Crinklaw, a reviewer in Booklist, remarked: “The novel boasts a beautiful prose style and an intricate, clockwork plot, if only it wasn’t … irritating.” In a more favorable assessment of the volume in Publishers Weekly, a contributor described the volume as “richly atmospheric and unrelentingly dark.” The same contributor asserted: “Lindsay solidifies his place as one of the rising stars of tartan noir.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2016, Don Crinklaw, review of Song of the Dead, p. 31.
Publishers Weekly, September 26, 2016, review of Song of the Dead, p. 70.
ONLINE
BookLore, http://www.booklore.co.uk/ (July 13, 2017), author profile.
Books & News, http://beneastbooks.com/ (January 22, 2015), B.A. East, review of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Crime Fiction Lover, http://www.crimefictionlover.com/ (July 2, 2014), Keith Nixon, author interview.
Douglas Lindsey Home Page, http://www.douglaslindsay.com (July 13, 2017).
Herald Scotland Online, http://www.heraldscotland.com/ (March 12, 2013), Calum Macdonald, author interview.
Scotland Daily Record Online, http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/ (June 22, 2014), Jenny Morrison, author interview.*
LINDSAY was born in Scotland in 1964 at 2:38a.m. It rained.
Some decades later he left to live in Belgium. Meeting his future wife, Kathryn, he took the opportunity to drop out of reality and join her on a Foreign & Commonwealth Office posting to Senegal. It was here that he developed the character of Barney Thomson, while sitting in an air-conditioned apartment drinking gin & tonic at eight o'clock in the morning. Since the late 1990s, he has penned seven books in the Barney series, and several other crime novels written in the non-traditional style.
His first book, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, has been translated into several languages and in July 2015 was released in the UK as the major motion picture event, The Legend of Barney Thomson, starring Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson and Ray Winstone.
QUOTED: "first off I can’t really say it’s a crime novel. However, there’s no question that there’s an underlying feeling of transgression. The main character is locked up and interrogated, so that he comes to the point where he begins to think he’s done something wrong. It’s a bit of a surrealist head-scratcher of a novel, part of its surreal quality being this air of wrongdoing."
"It’s fun to get away from it. To do the weirdness without the body count. That’s what Mr Kite is."
INTERVIEW: DOUGLAS LINDSAY
July 2, 2014 Written by Keith Nixon Published in Features 0 Permalink
douglaslindsay02The Scottish author Douglas Lindsay is already internationally known for his Barney Thomson series, in which a dour Glasgow barber finds himself at the centre of a very bizarre and violent set of mysteries. With Robert Carlyle currently filming The Legend of Barney Thomson for release in 2015, Lindsay has changed tack and written a surreal mystery about a man being interrogated for he knows not what. Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! – named after the track on Sgt Pepper – has recently been published, so we decided to find out more about the author and his work…
Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
I was always a bit like Jonathan Pryce’s character, Sam Lowry, in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Drifting and unambitious, total dreamer, muddling by. Fortunately when I met the woman I’d been dreaming about, rather than having one night of passion before the security services killed her and I went insane, we more mundanely got married. We went off to live in West Africa for a while, and I started writing.
Not that I’m necessarily any more ambitious, and there are still plenty of days of muddling, but now I write books. Essentially, though, I’m still Sam Lowry.
beingforthebenefitofmrkiteWhat will crime fiction lovers love about Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite?
Well, first off I can’t really say it’s a crime novel. However, there’s no question that there’s an underlying feeling of transgression. The main character is locked up and interrogated, so that he comes to the point where he begins to think he’s done something wrong. It’s a bit of a surrealist head-scratcher of a novel, part of its surreal quality being this air of wrongdoing.
You’ve written over 20 books now. How would you characterise your style and what inspires your stories?
Although all my fiction is contemporary, all set in very modern, recognisable places and institutions, I’d still describe the writing as fantastical, frequently bordering on the preposterous. I’m not striving to recreate real life. I want to be absurd. I want elements of the supernatural and the ridiculous. I know it creates problems for some readers, because I’m setting stories in very real situations, but at the same time stretching the limits of credulity. The very nature of crime is, of course, innately depressing. Shit things happen to good people. I don’t want to go into that. I don’t want readers to be depressed, even if I am or my characters are. I want them to know they’re reading fantastical fiction. If you want carefully researched reality crime, best look elsewhere.
Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite! seems like quite a departure from your most recent work, A Plague of Crows. Do you like messing with your reader’s head or are you a restless soul?
It probably stems from not originally being an instinctive crime writer. I don’t read many crime novels, it’s not something that I’m drawn to. I never thought of that first Barney Thomson book as a crime novel. It was just a story I wrote that happened to have crime at the centre of its narrative. Eventually, of course, if you keep populating your books with crime and police officers, there’s no point in denying the label.
The follow-up to A Plague of Crows – The Blood That Stains Your Hands – is already in the bag. However, it’s fun to get away from it. To do the weirdness without the body count. That’s what Mr Kite is. My original title was In Search of the Jigsaw Man, and Al Guthrie at Blasted Heath was like, ‘You can’t call it that, everyone’s going to be expecting the jigsaw man to be a psychotic, saw-wielding bastard.’ So we looked around for a suitable Beatles title. In the process the book probably became a bit more Beatles-related than it ever set out to be.
My jigsaw man just sits at a table doing jigsaws.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt during your long writing career?
It’s good to sit at a table doing jigsaws. Helps you think. Alternatively, go outside for a run or a bike ride. Don’t sit staring at a computer or notepad too long, while your head explodes and you drive yourself nuts through an inability to be suitably, effectively creative. Clear your head. Come back to it when you’re ready.
thelongmidnightofbarneythomsonBarney Thomson will be appearing on the big screen next year. How does that feel, and what do you expect director Robert Carlyle to do with Barney?
How does it feel? I’ve been asked that a lot the last couple of weeks. The answer should, of course, be wildly, head-bustingly, spunk-inducingly excited. However, it’s been such a long process – the film option was originally sold a few months before the book was published in February 1999 – so many up and downs, and so much uncertainty that it was ever going to come off, that at some point the only way to live with it was to shut down all emotional involvement. To think, if it happens, good, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a way of dealing with it, but the other side of it is that it’s difficult to then switch back on and start leaping around, kissing random strangers in the street. So, it’s great, and I can’t wait to see it, but I probably haven’t smiled yet as a result. Miserable sod, I know.
I have total confidence in Robert Carlyle. I don’t think there’s any doubt that his Barney is going to be less timid than my Barney, but that’s a positive. Obviously my Barney becomes less timid as the series progresses, so quite happy that Robert will be starting that process right from the off.
QUOTED: "I had a B.Sc. from Glasgow University and worked for the MoD in Glasgow and for Nato in Brussels before we moved to Africa. There, I had the choice between filling my days on the golf course and drinking G&T, or doing something I would enjoy. My favourite subject at school had been English, so writing was an obvious way to go."
12th March 2013
Meet the author: Douglas Lindsay
The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson
Douglas Lindsay
Douglas Lindsay
Douglas Lindsay
Get the latest local news straight to your inbox every day
Your email
Sign up
Calum Macdonald profiles DOUGLAS LINDSAY, creator of Barney Thomson
It was an unusual career choice, he admits now: enjoy the sybaritic lifestyle of being a diplomatic spouse in the African heat, playing golf and drinking gin, or start writing for a living.
Douglas Lindsay chose the latter, and the rest is a history known to a growing army of fans, drawn by his evocation of Barney Thomson, the barber at the centre of a series of bizarre, violent, deeply funny, and quintessentially Scottish events that have now spanned seven novels. The Long Midnight, the first, has been translated into German, Italian, French and Hungarian.
He’s not easily categorised, but a blend of Christopher Brookmyre and Quentin Tarantino gives you a starting point to describe Lindsay.
So how did his own story begin 48 years ago in Lanarkshire? Let’s use his own blog (he is a professional writer, after all) : “Lindsay was born in 1964 at 2:38a.m. There is some dispute over the weather conditions at the time.
“He spent the first few years of his life being an ‘if I'd had him first I wouldn't have had another one’ kind of a kid. Even now he shows no remorse over this behaviour.
“Some decades later he left Scotland to live in Belgium for a while. In the interim period he had been to watch Meadowbank Thistle a lot, including their famous 1-1 draw with Rangers in the League Cup semi-final (a game that might have meant something had not the first leg been lost 4-0).
“In Belgium he met his wife, Kathryn, and he took the opportunity to drop out of regular employment and join her on a Foreign Office posting to Senegal, West Africa.”
This was where the option of diplomatic spouse emerged. He takes up the story in our interview. “I had a B.Sc. from Glasgow University and worked for the MoD in Glasgow and for Nato in Brussels before we moved to Africa.
“There, I had the choice between filling my days on the golf course and drinking G&T, or doing something I would enjoy. My favourite subject at school had been English, so writing was an obvious way to go.”
Lindsay tried various short stories, including one featuring Barney Thomson, before being able to win a publishing deal. But, since 1999, he has had a prolific output, completing 10 novels, including seven in the Barney Thomson series, now published in an omnibus version as The Barbershop Seven.
Special Offer
Kindle ePub PDF
Where did such a memorable character come from? Real life, Lindsay swears. “He’s based on this bloke where I got my hair cut about 30 years ago. Obviously, not the things that happen to him, but the scene in The Long Midnight where all the customers are refusing to get their hair cut by him and waiting for the other barbers…I was there.
“It was probably too close but, as I assumed it would never get published, it didn’t really matter. I don’t know if he knows (about the Barney books), or even if he’s still alive. I haven’t been back to the shop.”
But what about the fictional elements of the narrative? They have to be fun, insists Lindsay, but “I just write what’s in my head…and then rewrite”.
And artistic influences? Does he accept my references to Brookmyre and Tarantino?
“For a writer, I don’t read that much. I’ve met Chris Brookmyre once at a reading, and he told me he’d read The Long Midnight. I confess I’ve not read any of his, though. Tarantino, yes, with Pulp Fiction – that’s been a huge influence. But it’s the only movie of his I’ve seen.”
Lindsay admits he’s a bit “detached from it all”, having spent his writing career living abroad, in Marybank, near Dingwall, from 2000-2 , or in Wells, Somerset, for the past decade.
Their current base allows his wife to continue at the Foreign Office, splitting her work between London and home, while he’s been an active father for their two children, Jessica and Hamish, now 14 and 12.
He describes his writing schedule as based on school terms, but still aims to produce 5000 words a day.
And if they’re not up to scratch, his first critic is close to home. “I show the books first to Kathryn; she’s not at all diplomatic, nor is she sycophantic.
“For a crucial part of The Haunting of Barney Thomson (sixth book in the series), I knew it was a mess, but I handed it over. She told me: ‘It’s a mess.’ So I fixed it…I just needed telling.”
Lindsay’s own story is worth telling, even more so if the current plans by Robert Carlyle to film The Long Midnight come to fruition. The author has openly voiced scepticism on his blog, but details are starting to come together and it appears he's quietly hopeful.
The big question that remains: will they serve G&Ts in the Scottish sunshine at the premiere? Or will it rain, and at least one guest suffer a spectacularly messy, comic death? My money’s on the latter…
Douglas Lindsay was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1964. He is married to Kathryn and has two children, Jessica and Hamish. He was educated at the University of Glasgow studying, in his own words, a "fairly useless B. Sc". He has worked for the Ministry of Defence in Glasgow and the UK delegation to NATO in Brussels. He then took special unpaid leave to join Kathryn on a posting to Senegal, West Africa, where the character Barney Thomson was conceived, returning to the Ministry of Defence in Andover before escaping to freedom in September 2000.
His first publication was the short story The Seventeenth in Xenos Magazine. In 1996 he was awarded third place in The Bridport Prize for the short story The Bad Men. His characters Mulholland and Proudfoot have been nominated for best comic detective in the Sherlock Award 2000. Other interests include music, listening to and playing piano and guitar on occasion. Movies and virtually all sports, except rugby league and horses.
Check out BookLore's exclusive interview with Douglas Lindsay here.
Having lived in Poland for a while, after leaving the Highlands of Scotland where his influences were "more cinematic than literary", he has returned home and currently lives in the south of England. His favourite authors are R. L. Stevenson, Ian Fleming and Annie Proulx, however, having said that, since the arrival of two children he doesn't get much chance to read at all. He likes to think of himself as their dad, but they are more likely to see him as "some bloke who lives with us and who shouts if we start throwing food at the dinner table".
QUOTED: "When I signed over the rights for the film many years ago, I knew there was a chance that, instead of my lead character Barney being a dour barber from Glasgow, the screenplay might have been so completely rewritten that he ended up being a basketball player in Australia. The possibility of the book being turned into a film has been going on for so long now that I was ready for whoever finally made the film to do anything. But these guys have been very faithful to my story, which is great."
"And speaking to Robert, it was clear how important to him it was that Glasgow was very much part of the film."
HomeEntertainmentCelebrity NewsRobert Carlyle
Writer reveals his delight that Glasgow will be the star of Robert Carlyle's big-screen crime caper
AUTHOR Douglas Lindsay tells of his pride that the movie version of his book, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, is being set in his home city.
18
SHARES
BYJENNY MORRISON
12:11, 22 JUN 2014
ENTERTAINMENT
Douglas Lindsay in Glasgow, where he met the stars of the movie based on his book.
18
SHARES
by Taboola Sponsored Links
Who is your guardian angel? (guardian-angel-messenger.com)If you're over 25 and own a computer, this game is a must-have (Vikings: Free Online Game)
Get Daily updates directly to your inbox
Enter your email
+ Subscribe
MOVIE star Robert Carlyle says there will be an uncredited co-star in his new film – his home city.
He has told the author of the comic crime tale that he plans to make Glasgow one of the leading lights in his new project.
Carlyle, Emma Thompson, Martin Compston, Ashley Jensen and Ray Winstone are among the big names shooting The Legend of Barney Thomson at locations across the city.
But Carlyle, who is making his debut as a director, has told author Douglas Lindsay they will be sharing the limelight with Glasgow.
Douglas, 50, met Carlyle and Thompson last week after being invited on to the set to watch them shoot scenes for the film being adapted from his book The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson.
The novel is a dark comedy thriller which tells the story of failing hairdresser Barney who lives a desperately dull life before accidentally becoming a serial killer.
Douglas was happily relieved to hear of Carlyle’s plans for the film. He said: “Being from Glasgow, Robert wants to make the city very much part of the story.
“If someone from Dublin had been directing this and said, ‘Right, let’s put this guy in Dublin and set the film there,’ I wouldn’t have been against it – you have to let the film people do their own thing.
“James Bond’s Moonraker is the classic example where the filmmakers have taken the main character and even kept the name of the villain but, instead of setting it in Dorset, Devon or wherever the book was set, they set it in space.
“When I signed over the rights for the film many years ago, I knew there was a chance that, instead of my lead character Barney being a dour barber from Glasgow, the screenplay might have been so completely rewritten that he ended up being a basketball player in Australia.
“The possibility of the book being turned into a film has been going on for so long now that I was ready for whoever finally made the film to do anything. But these guys have been very faithful to my story, which is great.
“And speaking to Robert, it was clear how important to him it was that Glasgow was very much part of the film.”
Douglas, who grew up in Cambuslang and has written seven Barney Thomson novels, wrote the first book while living in Senegal, Africa.
While the novel is loosely set around Maryhill and Partick, he hopes anyone who reads it will take away a sense of the city.
He said: “In the summer of 1995, my wife Kathryn, who works for the Foreign Office, was posted to Senegal and I went there with her.
“I had previously been working for the Ministry of Defence, based in Brussels, and when I arrived in Senegal with Kathryn, I had no job and not a huge number of prospects so I decided I could be a writer.
“Being newly married and in the first flush of romance, my wife agreed to this – and over the next three years, I probably wrote five or six books, including one about a Glasgow barber who accidentally ends up killing a few people.
“By the beginning of 1998, it was published. Then I got a deal for another two books, then a different deal for some more and now there are seven books in the Barney series. The first book doesn’t talk about lots of very specific locations in Glasgow but you do get a real sense of the place.
“When I visited the film set, they were shooting around the Barras, which is perfect.”
Here it is - your first OFFICIAL look at #EmmaThompson as Cemolina being directed by #RobertCarlyle on location in #Glasgow for #TheLegendofBarneyThompson
Robert Carlyle and Emma Thompson on location in Glasgow.
The film rights for the book were snapped up 15 years ago but two attempts to turn it into a film failed before producer Richard Cowan got in touch. Douglas said: “Richard was born and brought up in Vancouver, Canada, but his dad was born in Scotland and showed him a copy of my book.
“Richard wanted to make it into a movie and got in touch with a couple of other producers including John Lenic, who had worked with Robert Carlyle on his TV series Stargate.
“John showed it to Robert, who really liked it, and things just snowballed from there.
“When I heard Robert was not only going to play the lead role of Barney but direct the film, I was really pleased.”
Douglas never imagined what actors he would like to see playing the lead roles but is delighted by the chosen cast.
He said: “When I was writing the book, I honestly never knew what Barney looked like – I never
visualise what any of my characters look like.
“I had this discussion on set with the producer, who also wrote the movie script, and for him it is very important that he has an actor in his head when he is writing the screenplay – but that’s not how I work.
“Robert’s character of Barney in the film probably has a bit of a harder edge to him than my Barney in the book – but he is still very much a put-upon and put-down guy.
“Emma Thompson plays the role of Barney’s mum and, before meeting her, I was kind of expecting she would look a bit like her character Nanny McPhee – but she looked totally amazing.
“Her make-up had been done by Mark Coulier, who has worked on everything from Harry Potter to Merlin, and who won an Oscar for turning Meryl Streep into Mrs Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
“She was meant to look like a 70-year-old woman from Glasgow and that’s exactly how she looked and sounded.
“She obviously stays in character when she is on set so the whole time I was talking to her she was chatting away in the Glasgow accent of Barney’s mum.
“She was chatting about her Scottish roots but mainly, I felt as though I was the one doing all the talking.
“I’ve watched Emma on television and in films since she was in the 1980s TV series Alfresco, starring alongside everyone from Robbie Coltrane and Ben Elton to Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
“I felt as if I knew her really well because I knew so much about her but here she was chatting away to me as an old lady from Glasgow. She was lovely but it was very surreal.”
Douglas took his 16-year-old daughter Jessica with him to watch the night-time shoot and says the nine hours they watched filming “flew by”.
He added: “Jessica has been doing GCSE drama so it was good for her to be on set and see everything going on.
“We did our best to keep out of the road as best we could and I was quite surprised how tense it was and how exciting it was to watch.
“They were actually shooting a scene with Barney and his mum that isn’t in the book but that didn’t matter at all.
“It’s taken 15 years from when I was first told The Long Midnight Of Barney Thomson was going to be made into a film and now finally here we are – so I am over the moon.”
QUOTED: "The novel boasts a beautiful prose style and an intricate, clockwork plot, if
only it wasn't as irritating."
Song of the Dead
Don Crinklaw
Booklist.
113.3 (Oct. 1, 2016): p31.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Song of the Dead.
By Douglas Lindsay.
Nov. 2016. 272p. IPG/Freight, paper, $14.95 (9781910449745).
Ben Westphall, star of this fascinating and frustrating book, is an ex-spy working as a cop in Scotland. He's on duty when he encounters a body--
not just any body but one belonging to a fellow who was declared dead 12 years ago. This leads Westphall into an investigation of insurance
fraud and organ harvesting, and the reader who wants to tag along must keep company with a real downer of a detective. Fortunately, he has a sly
comic streak, and some may find that his one-liners compensate for constant iteration of lines like, "The awfulness of human beings knows no
boundary." Soon another corpse turns up, and then we watch dumbfounded as Westphall has an encounter with the paranormal. A voice out of the
ether tells him the mystery is almost solved, and an item that shouldn't exist does. Yes, we know genre-blending is all the rage, but this change of
direction seems to come from deep left field. Still, despite its odd bits, the novel boasts a beautiful prose style and an intricate, clockwork plot, if
only it wasn't as irritating as it is impressive.--Don Crinklaw
Crinklaw, Don
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Crinklaw, Don. "Song of the Dead." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 31. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467148004&it=r&asid=bda98eb6562b04a009b08bb308b43629. Accessed 2 June
2017.
6/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1496440724070 2/3
Gale Document Number: GALE|A467148004
---
QUOTED: "richly atmospheric and unrelentingly dark"
"Lindsay solidifies his place as one of the rising stars of tartan noir."
6/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1496440724070 3/3
Song of the Dead
Publishers Weekly.
263.39 (Sept. 26, 2016): p70.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Song of the Dead
Douglas Lindsay. Freight (IPG, dist.), $14.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-910449-74-5
Det. Insp. Ben Westphall, the glum narrator of this haunting series launch from Lindsay (Lost in Juarez), once traveled the world with Britain's
security services until he nearly died in a plane crash in central Africa. Now he's holed up in the relative quiet of Scotland's Dingwall, avoiding
air travel. All that changes when he's sent to Estonia (via ferry and car) to investigate claims that tourist John Baden, who allegedly died 12 years
earlier on a trip to the Baltic country with his girlfriend, is actually alive. Baden--whose body was found in a lake on the Russian border--recently
walked into a Tartu police station and told a fantastical story about being held captive for over a decade and used for organ harvesting and sex by
his captors. When Baden's story checks out, Westphall questions everything about the original investigation, particularly how DNA could match a
corpse and a man who's very much alive. With this richly atmospheric and unrelentingly dark outing, Lindsay solidifies his place as one of the
rising stars of tartan noir. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Song of the Dead." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 70+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558215&it=r&asid=d4416ba5d65808f6eb9fd2a6897ed056. Accessed 2 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465558215
QUOTED: "The book works because Kite and Jones, No-Name and Crosskill—even the elusive Jigsaw Man—are imbued with the necessary humanity. Prepare to fall in love again with the Beatles, and to learn which one was the coolest. Prepare for great irony: Paul is dead? Sure, you’re thinking, I know. I saw him die at the Olympic opening ceremony. ... Prepare, most of all, for a nightmare that’s all the more frightening because it’s real."
My latest review, included in the just-released Crime Factory issue #16–the excellent Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! by Douglas Lindsay. Enjoy, coffee drinkers and Beatles lovers!
Before Douglas Lindsay’s Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! descends into nightmare, the narrative hints at a story about the ho-hum life: the humorous musings of a middle-aged man resigned to a tired marriage, an uninspired job, and a sense that the only bright spot on his horizon is his intelligent daughter, Baggins. But the ennui is transformed by a surprise phone call from James Kite’s literary agent. A Hollywood mogul wants to produce his screenplay, The Jigsaw Man, which had languished for years on slush piles around the world.
Mr. K
That should resonate with anyone who’s sent their manuscripts off to editors, only to have the pages disappear without a trace. For Kite, however, the revival of his script—“exactly the type of straight-to-TV, martial arts bunfight that would be turned into a Steven Segal movie and shown in the late hours on Channel 5”, as he describes it—is received with disbelief and doubt rather than hope or joy. It can’t be real. As his wife Brin says: “It’s from Hollywood. Of course it’s fake.”
And so much of what follows can’t be real, either. Kite vanishes from a plane bound for Hollywood. The narrative next has him trapped in a dull grey cell inside a secretive American institution. He has no recollection or understanding of how he got there, let alone where there is. All he knows is that two humorless American agents, Crosskill and No-Name, want to know how he got off the plane, and the whereabouts of the Jigsaw Man. Queue Kite’s confusion—do they want the man or the script inspired by the man?—in the face of these humorless, stone-faced manifestations of bureaucracy.
Kite’s predicament forces us to ask: what might it be like to find oneself dressed in an orange jumpsuit, shackled to the floor behind a chain-link fence in Guantanamo Bay? Kite knows about as much of his circumstances as many of the Afghanis swept off the battlefield after 9/11knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or his plans for future attacks. Kite’s circumstances universalize their plight: Kite doesn’t know what happened to the plane; the reader knows Kite doesn’t know; and we can’t help but feel the helplessness of men trapped in a situation over which they have no control and no hope of escape. If this could happen to ho-hum Kite, Starbucks manager by day, failed writer by night, it could happen to any of us.
Lindsay is smarter than to make this a book about 9/11 and the ignorant cruelty of governments in fervent pursuit of “truth” in the name of “security”. Like “war”, this pursuit’s been with us since before the Inquisition, and I can’t help but recall Slaughterhouse-Five: “Do you know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?… I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’”
Lindsay’s surreal world isn’t the kind of thing I normally enjoy in fiction. Reality can be strange enough without speculating on the implausible: a psychic leap off a crashing plane; a second self residing in time six months behind the original self, whose life continues apace. But Lindsay manages to make his speculations work, even this: human manifestations of the greatest works of art (and pop culture!) resulting in, for example, four versions of the man who may or may not be the fifth Beatle. Yes, in the hands of most writers this set-up would be a recipe for really bad television about zombies. But Lindsay takes this concept and applies it, as I suggest at the outset, to the most ordinary, workaday life of one ordinary, workaday daddy stuck in the present while feeling guilty over unfinished business with Jones, a lover from deep in his past.
The book works because Kite and Jones, No-Name and Crosskill—even the elusive Jigsaw Man—are imbued with the necessary humanity. Prepare to fall in love again with the Beatles, and to learn which one was the coolest. Prepare for great irony: Paul is dead? Sure, you’re thinking, I know. I saw him die at the Olympic opening ceremony. However, the man who made us all suffer through “hey Jude” that warm London night in July, was not the man who exploded onto the music scene with the Beatles in the early 1960s. Prepare, most of all, for a nightmare that’s all the more frightening because it’s real.
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
By Douglas Lindsay
Blasted Heath, 2014