Laidlaw is the first novel of a series of crime books by William McIlvanney, first published in 1977.

[1] It features the eponymous detective in his attempts to find the brutal sex-related murderer of a Glasgow teenager.

Laidlaw is marked by his unconventional methods in tracking the killer, immersing himself in a 1970s Glasgow featuring violence and bigotry.

When Laidlaw was released in 1977, McIlvanney was known for recently winning the Whitbread Prize with his historical family novel, Docherty; as a complete departure from that genre, it surprised many of his readers.

[3] Alan Massie wrote that "Hemingway used to say that all American literature came out of Huckleberry Finn; all Scottish crime writing — ‘tartan noir’ — comes out of Laidlaw.