Scotland's secret king of crime

He was the avuncular man in sensible specs who, at his peak, was a Scottish household name – and the true pioneer of the gritty, murderous genre that is ‘tartan noir’.

Bill Knox, a journalist from the south side of Glasgow, covered untold crimes, fronted for almost a decade STV’s Crime Desk slot appealing for help from the public – always signing off the programme with the promise that any calls to the police ‘can be in confidence’ – and had abundant contacts in the constabulary.

But he was also, for decades, the author of many police procedurals and thrillers, of which the best remembered series follows the Glasgow homicides that entangled the excitable Chief Inspector Thane and his calmer deputy, Moss.

Knox used so many pseudonyms for other adventures it is hard to tally them all – Michael Kirk, Noel Webster, Robert MacLeod – but he is now thought to have written 65 books between 1957 and his death, a quarter-century ago, on March 24, 1999.

And thus founded a Scottish oeuvre that has in recent decades made fortunes for, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Stuart McBride and Chris Brookmyre, among others. 

Now, thanks to a Highland admirer, Knox’s sharply plotted and immersive stories are coming back into print. And not before time.

Pilot Error (1977) won him a Crime Writers Association award. Knox would win it again a decade later, for the ‘Most Authentic Novel in a Police Setting.’

His books sold strongly in America, two of his tales were filmed for German television and, in all, his novels were translated into 12 languages.

Knox took us into dark places: The Tallyman (1969), for instance, centred on illegal Glasgow moneylenders.

 ‘Somewhere in the Millside district of Glasgow, a tallyman – an unlicensed loan shark – is preying on people in desperate financial straits.

‘He loans them cash at rates they cannot hope to pay back –and then demands various services in kind. These “services” make the Tallyman a one-man crime wave...’

No wonder: he charges interest at 64 per cent, compound.

This was ground hardly anyone had previously dared explore. Glasgow, jumpy about its image, loathed its reputation as the haunt of gangs and razor-slashers.

The one exception, the 1935 publication of A McArthur and H Kingsley Long’s No Mean City, which was slammed by a city father as a ‘sensationalist work that left an indelible stain on Glasgow’s reputation.’

Thane and Moss, in their behatted decency, were classier.

Thane is indeed happily married and even has a dog, in contrast to the prevalent tradition that hard-bitten ‘tecs – Jim Taggart, DCI Morse, John Rebus – have anguished personal lives.

But Bill Knox’s work is far removed from the drawing-room whodunnits of Agatha Christie.

Rounded characters, exquisitely evoked settings. Motives are believable; facts – forensic procedure, and so on – were checked and rechecked.

His output was remarkable when you consider how many plates he was spinning.

Born in February 1928, he joined the late Glasgow Evening News as a copyboy at 16, before training as a general news reporter with a particular eye for crime.

By 1949 he was living in Troon, entraining daily for Glasgow. 

A girl called Myra always boarded at Prestwick, and she caught his eye. 

They married in 1950, settled in Clarkston – the final family home was in Newton Mearns – and had three children.

Bill later, too, became the Glasgow Evening News’ motoring correspondent. 

Then, on its launch in 1957, was hired by Scottish Television as its news editor. 

He even interviewed Peter Manuel, just before the serial-killer’s arrest. 

He would be the third-last man to be hanged in Scotland.

‘He got into a lot of trouble as the police didn’t know he was doing it,’ says Knox’s daughter, Susan Ward. 

‘For a weekend, myself, my mother and brother had to go to a safe house.’

‘He liked to balance a lot of eggs in a lot of different baskets. He never wanted to commit himself solely to writing. He wanted to do other things...’

His books were among the most borrowed from public libraries, and he played in fields beyond the police procedural: the Webb Carrick series, for instance, of unputdownable thrillers about a Fishery Protection vessel.

By the Seventies his stature was such that STV begged him back. 

He wrote and presented the hugely popular 100 Tales of Crime – five-minute fillers recounting this or that Scottish villainy.

But STV also gave him Crime Desk, and it is for its eight-year run that Knox is perhaps now best remembered.

He broadcast a Glasgow colloquialism – ‘neds’ – into the wider national vocabulary. 

He detailed thuggeries and housebreakings and some awful murders. Crime Desk had no gimmicks. 

It was little more than a talking head. Yet Knox – and the thousands of people who phoned in – helped, as his obituarist put it, to solve ‘an enormous breadth of crimes’.

But he kept industrially writing and, from 1984 till 1996, edited the RNLI (Scotland) magazine. 

In 1989 he was honoured with a Paul Harris Award and Knox took particular interest in the Cystic Fibrosis Association – for his youngest child, Ailsa, born in 1963, was a sufferer.

Over many years, every penny Bill Knox earned from public speaking – and he was widely sought – was slipped to the CFA, even after Ailsa’s death in 1986.

Bill’s writing essentially reflects the decency of the man. 

He was thrilled, late in life, when Boston University asked if they might have his personal papers – reflecting his standing in the U.S. 

The William Knox Collection, with all his letters and original manuscripts, abides today in the city’s Mugar Memorial Library.

Knox’s final novel, The Lazarus Widow, was completed posthumously by Martin Edwards, and quite a few of his books were still in print at his death. 

Yet, implacably, they slid from view.

Puzzled, Susan Ward went in search of her father’s literary agent. She was nowhere to be found, and Ward had to conclude she had died. 

Then, a couple of years ago, Barry Hutchison – based in Fort William and who writes his own fiction as J D Kirk – came upon a copy of Death Department (a 1959 Thane and Moss tale) while browsing in a second-hand bookshop.

‘I was hooked by the characters, hooked by the writing and transported back to 1950s Glasgow,’ Hutchison said. 

‘So I went to find the rest and realised that they were not available.’

Appalled, he finally managed to contact Mrs Ward, and Hutchison’s publishing concern – Zertex Media – is now reissuing Bill Knox’s novels.

Deadline came out in January as an audio book, digital download and paperback. Death Department followed in February; Leave it to the Hangman will appear at the end of March.

As Barry Hutchison’s research gathered pace, he ‘realised how well loved he was. His books were everywhere. We found reviews worldwide, including the New York Times, singing their praises in all these different places.

‘I would say he is probably one of the grandfathers of tartan noir. His books created a template for Scottish crime fiction.

‘I started my series before I read any of Bill’s books, but I can look at my characters DCI Jack Logan and DI Ben Ford now and I can see Thane and Moss in them.’

And, in a market so desperate for content, perhaps Bill Knox’s tales, enthralling as they are, will finally make it to our own screens, large and small.