A breathy Scotsman is better than any melody

Arab Strap's Love Detective pleasantly re-emerged in my head from the blue this week, but is paranoia an underused musical emotion? A few obsessive re-listens attested what the internal stereo had suggested, that this slice of weirdness - from The Red Thread and released as a single in 2001 - is compelling listening. 

The short story of a man who discovers his partner's sex diary in a red cashbox is as unusual in its delivery as its dark content. Aidan Moffat is in fine form, sounding deliberately breathy and removed he carefully delivers each sentence over an incongruously jangly, upbeat backing. 

The combination of an intriguing story and its status as just-about-a-song works well. It also makes you wonder why - despite loads of great music being made on drugs - paranoia and jealously feel under-used (with notable exceptions like Jolene, suggestions welcome). This sits among Arab Strap's finest work of their 11-year career, a mixtape stalwart and a remarkable piece of musical innovation.

Arab Strap - Love Detective (lyrics)

We slept in this morning and she had to get ready in a hurry - no time for her usual attention to detail - and she ran out the door, slamming it behind her, leaving her keys swinging and jangling. I stayed in bed until I heard the downstairs door shut, then peeked through the blinds and as soon as she was out of sight, I went for the keys. She never tried to make a secret of the box or the fact it was locked or even where she kept it. But as I said at the time - "If you've nothing to hide, why hide it?" 

It's one of those wee red cashbox things and she keeps it in a drawer by the bed, under some pictures and books. Every key she has is on the same keyring - it took me a while to find the right one. I don't know, I suppose I've had my doubts for a while. There's been hushed phone-calls virtually every night, her friends stop talking when I come in the room and they look at each other, and I don't know, it's just a feeling. Anyway, I eventually found the right key and it fitted perfectly in. I put the box on top of the bed and opened it up... 

There were these pictures of friends and ex's, letters, postcards, doodles, nothing bad - and then I found some sort of sex diary and I went to the latest entry. It explicity detailed a recent adventure up the park with a boy she said she had forgotten about... 

And it got worse as it went on. The dates never made sense, there were people I had never even heard of. Eventually I had to stop reading it because I started to feel sick. So I put everything back the way I found it, shut the drawer and phoned you. See, I don't know what to do. I keep having fantasies about leaving her dictaphone under the pillow or following her when she goes to work. I've been lying about where I'm going, just in case I can bump into her. 

Why Iain Banks was the perfect author to pen his own death

'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.'

Prentice McHoan's openings words of The Crow Road often come back to me in moments of dark humour and it is fitting that their author's passing this week came after a period resigned to his death. 

Banks died this week just three months after announcing he had been diagnosed with gall bladder cancer and just 11 days short of the publication of his final novel, The Quarry. Morbid irony has been something on which Banks has built a career so although his final novel casts a narrator dealing with his dad's terminal cancer, he was 87,000 words into the book before discovering his own illness. "I've really got to stop doing my research too late. This is such a bad idea," Banks said before his death.

The tributes which have poured in via the prolific writers' fan site have been astonishing and it's heartening as a true fan myself to see that other people have had similar reactions. From identifying with his characters to taking inspiration from his musical references, Banks has helped shaped my life and plenty of others' too. 

Like another personal favourite, Haruki Murakami, Banks was not afraid to riff on the same themes novel after novel, giving the readers what they wanted and keeping his focus narrow in his works. Where Murakami writes about jazz, hotels and cats, Banks visits misjudged youth, death and remote Scottish locations. He also identified that this distinct brand differed significantly from his science fiction writing to the point it may alienate (pun intended) many fans, choosing to pen the sci-fi novels under Iain M Banks in a clever move. 

Joseph McFadden as The Crow Road's Prentice McHoan

Perhaps his finest achievement was to create believable characters. From the flaws that lie in bass guitar rock'n'roll star Dan 'Weird' Weir in Espedair Street to journalist Cameron Colley in Complicity, the odd foibles and failings of his distinct main characters, McHoan in particular, are something to revel in. Banks is also able to weave in the darkly humorous and odd too. In arguably his most celebrated novel, The Wasp Factory (Banks' debut aged 30), Banks creates Frank Cauldhame, a 16-year-old with a fascination for killing insects and a bizarre relationship with his family that results in a wicked twist at its conclusion. Banks' ability to sooth and shock in equal measure through twisted and depraved imagery cannot be underestimated. 

He described himself as a 'slacker' but wrote a swathe of mainstream bestsellers which he knocked off a couple of months at a time at a rate of 3,000 words a day.    

However, Banks was not a flawless character. His sci-fi novels were often hugely indulgent while Raw Spirit, a travelogue of Scotland and its whisky distilleries published in 2003, is an example of success allowing artistic freedom to publish vanity projects. Moreover, his brusk manner, often interpreted as arrogance, made Banks a hard person to like in interviews. 

But the calm, quiet manner in which he slipped from this world showed in his actions that Banks was the wry characters his books suggest.

His writing will be missed and his legacy remembered. Let's hope there's no explosions at the funeral.