THE son of the late Scottish writer William McIlvanney is in the running for the prestigious literary prize that bears his father's name.

Liam McIlvanney has made long list for the McIlvanney Prize, previously known as the Scottish Crime Book of the Year, for his novel The Quaker.

The award was renamed two years ago in honour of the late writer, who died in 2015.

Mr McIlvanney joins Lin Anderson, Chris Brookmyre, Mason Cross, Charles Cumming, Oscar de Muriel, Helen Fields, Alison James, James Osward, Caro Ramsay, Andrew Reid and Craig Robertson on the long list for the annual award, which is bestowed at the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival in Stirling.

McIlvanney lives in New Zealand, and his previous books include Where the Dead Men Go, The Good of the Novel, All the Colours of the Town and Burns the Radical.

He is also an academic at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature.

Craig Sisterson, chair of the judges, said: "Forty-one years ago, William McIlvanney rocked the British literary world with Laidlaw, a gritty and socially conscious crime novel that brought Glasgow to life more vividly than anything before.

"This year's longlistees for the McIlvanney Prize demonstrate how modern Scottish crime writing has flourished from those seeds. "From debutants to authors with more than 20 books, spy thrillers to long-running detective series, nineteenth-century mysteries to futuristic space station noir, there's an amazing range of talent on show."

The award includes a prize of £1000 and a promotion in the Waterstones bookseller chain.

The judges for the next round will be chaired by Craig Sisterson and include comedian and crime fiction fan, Susan Calman and crime reviewer, Alison Flood.

The finalists will be revealed at the beginning of September.

Previous winners are Denise Mina with The Long Drop 2017, Chris Brookmyre with Black Widow 2016, Craig Russell with The Ghosts of Altona in 2015, Peter May with Entry Island in 2014, Malcolm Mackay with How A Gunman Says Goodbye in 2013 and Charles Cumming with A Foreign Country in 2012.