Keeping Watch on the Soul of Scotland : Books: Creator of tough-talking detective Jack Laidlaw, William McIlvanney broods on the fate of Glasgow in a world obsessed with image.

We’re kind of a special coterie, we Laidlaw fans.

Nobody’s organized us. Our hero’s not a household name. He’s kind of odd, in fact.

His life, as he reminds us, is “one terrible mess,” and he reads philosophy “in a slightly frenetic way, like a man looking for the hacksaw that must be hidden somewhere, before the executioner comes.”

Inspector Jack Laidlaw is a tough-talking, hard-drinking Glasgow detective who can quote Albert Camus and Soren Kierkegaard and Miguel de Unamuno. His creator, Scots novelist and poet William McIlvanney, writes like a cross between Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon. He can depict the seamy, violent side of Glasgow on one page and dissect the Scottish soul on the next.

McIlvanney does not churn these works out. Only three Laidlaw books have been published in the last 15 years, each wondrously wrought. The latest, “Strange Loyalties” (William Morrow & Co.), has just been published in the United States.

Well-known in Scotland as a craftsman of other sensitive, more “literary” novels, McIlvanney, 55, has raised eyebrows for devoting so much time to detective stories.

“It’s a little like taking your mistress to your wife’s funeral,” he says. “It’s just not done. People used to tell me that the Laidlaw books were beneath my dignity. But I’ve always believed in the Laidlaw books as well as in the other books. Good writing is good writing, wherever it is.”

Americans cannot really tell whether McIlvanney is slumming or soaring in the Laidlaw books. Although he has published seven novels, a book of short stories and three volumes of poetry in Britain, only the three Laidlaw books and another novel have been published in the United States. There is not much to compare over here.

But we Laidlaw fans do not care.

I first came upon Laidlaw in 1989 while writing a magazine article about the renaissance of Glasgow, once the second most important city in the British Empire but fallen upon sore times in the last half-century. It had, in fact, become renowned throughout Britain for the squalor of its slums. Although unable to revive its moribund shipbuilding industry, city officials were trying to restore the magnificent 19th-Century town center and transform Glasgow into a modern, high-tech city serving all of Western Europe.

A colleague, part of the coterie, handed me a copy of “Laidlaw,” the first of the series, as if it were the Holy Grail.

“You ought to read this before going to Glasgow,” he advised. I bought the second Laidlaw, “The Papers of Tony Veitch,” while in Glasgow. Writing the article back in the United States, I soon found that these two books would serve as my main printed sources about the true nature of life in the city.

In “The Papers of Tony Veitch,” Jack Laidlaw looks down upon the expanse of Glasgow and sees “a place so kind it would batter cruelty into the ground. . . . It danced among its own debris. When Glasgow gave up, the world could call it a day.” That became one of the themes of my article.

A while ago, on assignment to interview prominent Europeans for a survey, I decided that a Scottish detective novelist would surely make a worthwhile subject. By then, I had also discovered Laidlaw admirers all around me, even among my editors at The Times.

McIlvanney--known as Willie throughout Scotland--accepted my invitation, and we dined at his favorite Italian restaurant, Ristorante La Parmigiana, on the Great Western Road a few blocks from the University of Glasgow.

I discovered an ebullient, funny, open, enthusiastic Scot crackling with metaphors. Tall, handsome, with slightly graying hair and a black mustache, Willie, like Laidlaw, brooded over the oppressive phoniness of modern life.

When I told him that Washington correspondents made more of an impact on America with their television appearances than with their dispatches, he said, “Stan, you’ve depressed me. You really have.”

Yet McIlvanney himself appears relatively often on Scottish television, and I had no doubt throughout the evening that his wit surely enhanced sales of his books.

We discussed the new book, “Strange Loyalties.” He feared that some fans might be disappointed to find that it was not a detective story in the classic sense. Laidlaw is investigating his brother’s death by a hit-and-run driver and trying to determine whether Laidlaw himself had some responsibility for it.

“In retrospect,” McIlvanney says, “that’s what I have been trying to do all my life. It’s sort of like investigating your own death.” A friend had likened the book to the movie “Angel Heart,” in which the actor Mickey Rourke, hunting for the killer, discovers that it is himself. McIlvanney liked the comparison.

McIlvanney taught school for several years but gave it up a little more than a decade ago. He did not mind teaching so much but found it isolating and demanding.

“I didn’t want to find myself at age 64 saying that I might have written something fine, if I had only given myself the time,” he explains.

Like Laidlaw, he touched many issues at dinner, fretting over an excess of image in modern life, a loss of social consciousness, a sense of greed. He deplored the long reign of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who ran the British government from 1979 to 1990.

“Thatcher was terrible for the country and for Glasgow,” he says. “We Scots used to have a social consciousness. When you walked down the street, you created it. The community became a part of you. Now there is so much greed. All that people care about is that I’m all right and my family is all right. It’s not as bad in Glasgow as it is in England. But the situation is deteriorating here.”

He is troubled that Glasgow, as it tries to refurbish and burnish itself, scrub the soot off its magnificent churches and Victorian mansions and catch the eye of investors, focuses on image these days, not reality. Somehow the renaissance of Glasgow seems linked, in his mind, to yuppies and the mood of Thatcherism.

“Glasgow is losing its sense of community,” he says. “For some people, Glasgow is only a line between the theater and a wine bar. They light up the old buildings at night. Sure, I like the restorations. But they leave all the other things in darkness. And the gap between rich and poor is greater than ever. We have never seen so many beggars, so many homeless, as we have now.”

In 1990, Glasgow staged a yearlong festival of art, music and drama when it was appointed the European city of culture. But this had struck McIlvanney much like the restorations of the buildings--glitter cloaking truth.

“Sure, I like a festival,” he says. “There was nothing wrong with being the city of culture in itself. But I found it harmful because it made people think that the festival would help solve the problems of the city. It was like trying to cure cancer with cosmetic surgery.” The words could have cascaded out of Laidlaw.

Divorced and the father of two, McIlvanney acknowledges that the kids are studying at Oxford University, a kind of disgrace for a Scottish father. But he says that he had advised them, if they were going to study outside Scotland, that they should study at Oxford.

He also had another confession: He had driven over from Edinburgh to meet me in Glasgow. This herald of Glasgow was living in its rival, the genteel, rich, quiet capital of Edinburgh. Most Glaswegians (as the denizens of Glasgow are known) have contempt for Edinburgh.

“You know what we say in Glasgow,” he confides. “Edinburgh is like a woman wearing a fur coat and no knickers--all show, but nothing inside.”

When “Strange Loyalties” was published in the United States, I bought a copy and completed it on a trip overseas. While in London, I phoned Willie and discovered that he had moved back to Glasgow.

“There is a Scottish vaudeville act between Glasgow and Edinburgh, with both of them dumping on each other,” he explained over the phone. “Glasgow is supposed to be all heart and Edinburgh all facade. It’s supposed to be a cold town.

“Do you know the old joke? When you show up unexpectedly at a home in Glasgow, they will say to you at the door, ‘Come on in and have a cup of tea.’ But when you show up at a home in Edinburgh, they will say, ‘Come on in. You’ve already had your tea.’

“But I like them both,” he went on, “though I probably prefer Glasgow.”

He says he does not know how well “Strange Loyalties” sold in Britain. “I never follow these things. I have a self-protective instinct not to look at the statistics.”

After the book was published in Britain, he started three others. “I’m creative at starting things,” he confesses, “but not so good at finishing.” In fact, he has put all three aside for a few months. Now, “I’m doing a script for the telly. I’m going to finish that first. There’s a lot of loot.”

But he does not want to talk about the plot. “I tend not to talk about these things,” he explains. “It’s sort of like letting air into the wound.”

I then asked the vital question. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “One of the unfinished three is a Laidlaw.”