Stuart MacBride isn’t a fan of social media. And that is putting it mildly.
The best-selling Aberdeen author has watched in incredulous fashion as the opinions of experts are trashed by those who regard themselves as “influencers” and believe that having a large number of followers on Twitter, TikTok or Instagram allows them the right to use it as a platform for whatever wacky theories they want to promote.
And, even while we were talking about his new book, The Dead of Winter, MacBride launched into a splendid diatribe about one of the great scourges of modern life.
He brands it the “Swamp of Stupid”. And he didn’t waste any time in explaining why he regards the phenomenon as something which should be tackled head-on.
‘Swamp of Stupid gets deeper and deeper’
He said: “Now, more than ever, we have a media landscape – both ‘social’ and traditional – that celebrates not knowing things.
“We’ve had enough of experts’ they cry. Really? We’ve had enough of people who know what they are talking about, so you want to platform some spud with no experience whatsoever, but who thinks that their opinion is as valid as a respected professional who has studied the topic for years?
“How does that make sense? No wonder the Swamp of Stupid™ gets deeper and deeper every year. And it doesn’t help that all the crocodiles have sodding Twitter accounts.
“If we spent more time supporting readers and artists and writers and musicians and everyone else involved in the arts, and less time handing megaphones to narcissistic, malevolent, clueless bumholes, we would be much happier as a species.”
‘This stuff matters!’
As he argued, it’s as if priorities have gone through the looking glass in recent years. The cultural sector is struggling at the moment, buffeted by a toxic cocktail of rising costs and diminishing audiences, as the public tackles shrinking household budgets.
Thus, there is talk of venues and theatres, cinemas and galleries closing their doors, and it has yielded casualties in recent months while many libraries across Scotland are in jeopardy, despite the myriad benefits they offer.
MacBride said: “It’s a widely reported statistic that the creative arts in Scotland contribute over £5bn to our economy. The return on investment is about four to one. That alone should be enough to make supporting all the things on the list a no-brainer. But beyond the “grubby finance”, these are the things that enrich us as a people. This is what supports and grows our culture. This stuff matters!
This redoubtable individual has already proved he has a rich hinterland. Quite apart from a string of acclaimed books – he hit the ground running with his novel Cold Granite, featuring DS Logan McRae in 2005 – MacBride was crowned world stovies champion in 2014, won Celebrity Mastermind three years later, with his specialist subject being Winnie the Pooh writer A.A. Milne, and he speaks fervently about living with his wife Fiona and three cats, Gherkin, Onion and Beetroot, in the north-east.
The new novel is a corker
His latest work has an intriguing premiss: A policeman is stranded in Glenfarach, a town full of ex-convicts after picking up a dying prisoner from HMP Grampian.
So how can you tell who did it when everyone is guilty?
He explained: “The inspiration for Glenfarach goes way back in time to 2009 when I heard about a sex offender who had served his sentence, then been hounded out of every town he had tried to live in.
“Each time he would move, someone would spot him, tell the papers, and they would whip up a mob. In the end he had to live in a police station, before being stuck on a train to Aberdeen. That case was the inspiration for my sixth book, Dark Blood, but the situation has ticked away in the back of my head for years.
How do you deal with ex-offenders?
“Surely, he couldn’t be the only person who had been released, but was either a threat to society, or at risk from the rest of us?
“So, what would be the best way to deal with a bunch of people like that? They had served their time, so you couldn’t just stick them back in prison, but where else would they be safe? And that’s where the idea of a sleepy wee village, nestled in the heart of the Cairngorms, came from. Which felt like the perfect place to set a crime novel.”
It’s a compelling plotline in a closed community which would be ideal for a television dramatisation. Indeed, there have been suggestions in the past that the Logan McRae novels would be ideal fare for those who lap up Shetland and Rebus, but MacBride has always been resistant to his doorstop volumes, backed by diligent research, being trimmed or even slashed to suit the demands of ratings-obsessed TV executives.
Yet, he seems to be mellowing in that respect, even if he is still guarded about his thrillers ending up on screen with everything changed except the main character.
The problem is getting it right
He said: “I’m slightly less militant about this than I used to be. I was very much against someone coming in and running roughshod over the stories, playing fast and loose with the characters, and generally screwing things up. No one was getting their greasy, panini-stained fingers on Logan, [DS Roberta] Steel, or anyone else.
“Maybe I’ve softened a bit in my old age. Certainly, the thought doesn’t give me the heebs [heebie-jeebies] the way it used to. The problem with these things is finding a production company who would be faithful to the books, and they are rarer than a politician with scruples and a decent moral compass.”
The 53-year-old spent lockdown keeping busy, although he didn’t feel the need to share his day-to-day routine on Facebook or anywhere else. But, as he admitted, while he should have been less affected than others, the pandemic disrupted everything.
He said: “I’ve been working from home for about 16 years, so you would think lockdown wouldn’t have made much of a difference, but as a lot of people suddenly found out – working from home quickly gets old if you can’t go anywhere.
He still had access to email
“I coped with the daily grind and disease-ridden world by writing two short-ish novels and a pair of novellas featuring DS Steel and her reluctant sidekick Tufty. Fun stories with maybe not quite as much bloodshed as normal, designed to cheer people up in these horrible plague times. Which I’ve still to find a publishing home for, sadly.
“Luckily, research wasn’t a problem, because my experts are all reachable by email.”
That’s right. Experts. The opposite of the people in the “Swamp of Stupid”.
The Dead of Winter is published by Bantam Press on February 16.
FIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUART MACBRIDE
1)What book are you reading? “Burn The Plans by Tyler Jones. It’s a wonderfully creepy collection of short stories.”
2)Who is your hero/heroine? “I don’t have one.”
3)Do you speak any foreign languages? “No, but I do have a very convincing Gallic shrug.”
4)What’s your favourite music or band? “It’s a toss-up between Frightened Rabbit and Wagner, at the moment.”
5)What’s your most treasured possession? “The lovely acoustic guitar my wife gave me 27 years ago.”
