William McIlvanney is credited with being the founder the Tartan Noir Movement that includes authors such as Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, all of whom cite him as an influence and an inspiration. The Laidlaw trilogy "changed the face of Scottish fiction." His Docherty won the Whitbread Award for Fiction. Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers' Association. Strange Loyalties won the Glasglow Herald's People's Prize.

Eck Adamson, an alcoholic vagrant, summons Jack Laidlaw to his deathbed. Probably the only policeman in Glasgow who would bother to respond, Laidlaw see in Eck's cryptic last message a clue to the murder of a gangland thug and the disappearance of a student. With stubborn integrity, Laidlaw tracks down a seam of corruption that runs from the top to the bottom of society.