Dark world of Granite Noir comes to Aberdeen

The 2018 crime novel festival Granite Noir is getting under way in Aberdeen today and runs from Friday 23rd - Sunday 25th February 2018.  The festival has been organised by Aberdeen Performing Arts (APA), who describe the event on their website : "Over three days we’ll explore the enduring appeal of stories that plunge us into the heart of darkness - where morality is ambiguous, motives complicated, and even heroes harbour devastating secrets". Authors attending the festival include Val McDermid, Ann Cleeves, Christopher Brookmyre, Hugh Fraser and Robert Daws. Granite Noir will also be hosting authors from Scandinavia to talk to audiences about their novels. Nordic noir is the name given to their genre of crime fiction, famous for its settings in bleak landscapes, and like much of Scottish crime fiction, dark, brooding and morally complex.

Aberdeen (Scottish Gaelic: Obar Dheathain) in north-east Scotland gained the nick name Granite City when during the mid-18th to mid-20th the buildings incorporated locally quarried grey granite. The area around Aberdeen has been settled for over 8,000 years, at a time when prehistoric villages lay around the mouths of the rivers Dee (Uisge Dhè) and Don (Deathan). Aberdeen was once in Scotland's Pictish territory with Old Aberdeen being the approximate location of Aberdon, thought to be the first settlement of Aberdeen. The Celtic word aber means "river mouth", so this literally means "the mouth of the Don".