Tony’s bold and gutsy style – influenced by Pop Art, German Expressionism and Fauvism – is rooted in the kind of spontaneous art he enjoyed in his childhood, filling endless notepads with colourful and striking images.
Always a storyteller – in words and pictures – a budding ambition to paint was quickly shelved after unexpected success as a best selling novelist with his anti- hero punk rocker detective, Gus Dury scorching through the Scottish crime scheme, headbutting a politician on the way!
Dubbed ‘tartan noir’, Tony’s work has been nominated for eight CWA Daggers and was runner up in the Guardian’s Not The Booker prize. In fact, Irvine Welsh the author of Trainspotting said “Tony Black is my favourite British crime writer and Gus Dury is the genre’s most interesting protagonist… the power, style and street swagger that makes most of his contemporaries a little bland by comparison”.