Louise Welsh

Hello, welcome to A Good Read, where we talk about some books we love.

And with me today are two top crime writers.

Louise Welsh is the author of 10 novels, among them The Cutting Room, The Second Cut, and most recently, The Cut Up.

She's also a professor of creative writing at the University of Glasgow.

Chris Brookmeyer began his career with Quite Ugly One Morning, later adapted for TV with James Nesbitt, while his many novels since include Black Widow, The Cracked Mirror and, just out, Quite Ugly One Evening.

Chris, would you start us off?

Well, Louise Welsh, Ian Banks' Espadaire Street.

less real almost that was like almost like a dream and contemporary 1980s set material was immediate but that's when he's living the regret I hadn't I hadn't read Espadere Street before and it took me three or four pages to get into it I think because you're bombarded with these names to begin with you get a whole list of names including you know Danny our hero about four pseudonyms under which he's operated at various times

But once I got past that, I really enjoyed it.

What I liked about it, I understand what you're saying about the regret and so on, but there was so much fun in it as well.

You could tell that Ian Banks, or it felt as though he'd had great fun, sort of wild fun, creating so much, including the house where, well, I say the house, the domain in which Danny lives.

We're told that he lives in this fake church that was built by a sort of mad with grief family.

millionaire in the 19th century and it's even got a fake churchyard outside and for some reason it's full of Eastern European goods I mean Eastern European alcohol vodka of course and plum brandy and stuff but also sort of I don't know bits of engineering I mean are we ever told why?

Actually, Danny is a really interesting character because he's partly enormously self-confident.

I mean, he's something like 17 when he approaches this rock band.

And, you know, they're just playing for fun.

They're all going on to university, they think.

And he says, look, I can write songs.

My songs will convert you.

Suddenly you will be a big success.