Iain Banks wrote contemporary literary fiction under his own name and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. His non-science-fiction novels range widely in form and tone. The Wasp Factory follows the isolated teenage narrator Frank on a Scottish island, mixing family secrets, ritual and grotesque violence with an unreliable account of identity. The Crow Road begins with a funeral and expands into a family novel involving disappearance, memory and several generations, while Complicity uses a crime-thriller structure to connect a journalist with a series of murders. Espedair Street follows a former rock musician looking back on fame and its aftermath. Banks often combines dark humour, Scottish settings, elaborate plotting and characters whose understanding of themselves changes as hidden information emerges. Readers looking for literary fiction with Gothic, crime or family-saga elements can start with The Crow Road; The Wasp Factory is shorter and more disturbing, while his Culture novels belong to the separate science-fiction side of his career. Read more Less
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