 "The Testament of Gideon Mack", meanwhile, is set in a fictitious rural village that resembles the villages of eastern Scotland bordering the Highlands between Dundee and Aberdeen where Robertson currently lives.His novels, therefore, feature the Scottish urban and rural landscape as prevalently as Scottish history between the 17th and 20th centuries.While Robertson's first two novels featured the Scottish past ("The Fanatic" merged a story of contemporary Scotland in the months surrounding the 1997 election with a story of Scotland in the 17th century, while "Joseph Knight" was purely historical) he is not a historical novelist, and "Gideon Mack" was set in Scotland between the 1950s and the present day.