 McIlvanney's "Laidlaw" novel has been called the first novel of the tartan noir genre, given its combination of humanism and police procedural.While "Laidlaw" is critically important, and a novel that inspired many authors, the TV series "Taggart" established crime in a Scottish setting in the popular imagination.Glenn Chandler, creator of "Taggart" and writer of many of its early stories, may have been inspired by "Laidlaw".