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IAN RANKIN An interview with...


We spend five minutes with the creator of detective John Rebus and bestselling crime author, Ian Rankin. His latest novel The Impossible Dead was published in October 2011.


You wrote the first Rebus novel in 1987 and the last (17th) in 2007. How different was the experience? I wrote my first Inspector Rebus novel as a postgraduate student in Edinburgh, sharing digs with two other students, and with my writing desk squeezed into a


tiny bedroom. Writing was a hobby for me, albeit one that paid a few quid now and then. I sat down to write Rebus’s retirement novel in a nice big house in a leafy part of Edinburgh. I have a big office, two desks and a computer. Inspector Rebus has bought me all of this, for which I thank him. And it’s still a lot of fun to write novels.


What are you working on at the moment? It takes a couple of months to get the idea for a novel, convince yourself that it is up to scratch, and do enough research to allow you to begin writing the book. Then the first draft takes about four months, with a further two months for tinkering/editing. When the book is published I then spend a further month or two touring with it. So that’s 10 months of each year accounted for. My novel The Impossible Dead was published in early October. It is a follow-up to The Complaints.


What has been you career highlight to date? I’ve had lots of career highlights. When Black and Blue won the Cartier Diamond Dagger for the year’s best crime novel, it gave me a boost of confidence. When I received an OBE ‘for services to literature’, that was also a big deal. Honorary degrees, Desert Island Discs, The South Bank Show...


Anything else you’d like to achieve, work or non work related? There are lots of things I’d still like to achieve; learning to play guitar, being the front man in a successful rock band… but time is pressing.


Which five albums would you take to a desert island with you? I’d never be lonely if accompanied by Solid Air (John Martyn), Let It Bleed (Rolling Stones) Kind of Blue (Miles Davis), Unknown Pleasures (Joy Division) and The Boy With the Arab Strap (Belle and Sebastian).


You’re based in Edinburgh but if you could live anywhere else in the world, where would you choose? Vancouver, south-west France, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Barcelona, Kefalonia... I could go on.


You’re a valued customer of LAING the Jeweller. Do you have a few words to say about the store?


I was actually in the Edinburgh store earlier today. My wife and I are celebrating our silver wedding anniversary and bought platinum rings for one another. A great selection, attentive staff, and close to good bars and restaurants - perfect.


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