Author interview: Rankin and Rebus raise a glass to their silver anniversary

Ian Rankin has been at the top of his game for decades, selling more than 30m books in his career, but he’s not one to take success for granted and is still prepared to put in the work to sell a book. 

When we chat, the Scottish author — who is best known for his long-running crime fiction series featuring Detective John Rebus — is in the middle of a blitz of events to promote his latest book  and declares himself “tired but happy”.

Midnight and Blue is the 25th outing for Rankin’s complicated, cranky but much-loved protagonist, and I begin by wishing them both a happy silver anniversary. 

He chuckles drily. “Is that what it is? I’ve certainly known him longer than most of my friends.”

Rankin wrote the first Rebus book, Knots and Crosses, when he was a postgrad at the University of Edinburgh,

When it was published in 1987, he certainly didn’t foresee that the partnership would still be going strong.

“He was meant to be only in one book. After I had written that, I went off and did other things. But I came back to him, basically because my editor told me he liked him as a character and there was more I could do with him.”

'Genius' Rankin has few equals

Described by his fellow writer Lee Child as a “genius”, Rankin has few equals when it comes to consistently pulling off compelling, propulsive plots.

He has continued to successfully place Rebus in various crime-driven scenarios since his retirement from the force. In Midnight and Blue, Rebus is behind bars, awaiting an appeal against his conviction for the murder of gangster ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty. 

When a fellow inmate is murdered, Rebus — of course — is in the perfect position to investigate. 

Rankin says it was a challenge, albeit a welcome one, to take Rebus out of his natural habitat on the mean streets of Edinburgh and transplant him to the claustrophobic confines of prison.

“It is a good thing for a writer, especially when you have been doing a long series, to be taken out of your comfort zone.

“It had to happen. The guy has killed somebody, he has to go to prison.

“When I started to think about the ramifications of that, I knew this was going to be a really interesting book to write.”

He is an ex-detective in prison, surrounded by people who hate his guts, and when a murder happens, he is the best-placed person to try and solve it.

Rankin, 64, has been writing across five decades now — “Surely it’s only four … eighties, nineties, noughties, tens, oh, it is five decades, oh my God” — and Rebus is (roughly) ageing in real time, serving as a proxy of sorts for his creator.

“He takes on all the aches and pains and everything else that are waiting around the corner for me.

“I give all that stuff to him so I don’t have to worry about it so much.

“Because I’m writing about how he deals with them, I am preparing myself for dealing with them too,” he says.

Rebus is up there with the most memorable detectives in fiction, but Rankin says he will never achieve the top accolade in the city he calls home. 

“Yeah, it doesn’t matter how good he gets, he is only ever going to be the second-most memorable Edinburgh detective because of Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle was born and brought up in Edinburgh, there is absolutely no beating that.”

Rebus is, in the grand tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction, a dysfunctional character with a disastrous private life.

Why does he think readers have such an abiding affection for his leading man?

“He is a maverick and we do like a maverick.”

He is on the side of good, he is always trying to solve the puzzle, to bring order from chaos — although he sometimes brings a bit of chaos with him along the way.

“He works in a fascinating city and I think a lot of people like that, they like the setting.

“In the early books especially, he is quite a dangerous guy to be around.

“There’s an edge of danger to him, he is always getting in fights, getting in scrapes, he is always an entertaining person to be around.”

After a hard day fighting crime, Rebus likes to drop the needle on his vinyl collection and kick back with a (not quite) wee dram.

Rankin gets to indulge his own love of music through his detective — on the playlists of both is Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher.

In 2013, Rankin collaborated with Rory’s brother Donal on the creative project Kickback City, for which he wrote a novella, The Lie Factory, which was accompanied by a selection of the guitarist’s crime-related songs.

As well as being influenced by his music, Rankin says he admires Cork-reared Gallagher for his authenticity. During the conflict in the North, the guitarist continued to play in Belfast — where the author’s wife Miranda grew up.

“The thing about Rory Gallagher is that he was absolutely honest and authentic. What you saw and heard was what you got. And I just loved that about him. 

“My wife grew up in Belfast in the Troubles, and she had great affection for Gallagher.

“His brother Donal, who has done a lot to keep Rory’s legacy alive, told me he was a big fan of crime fiction — especially American crime fiction — and he would go on tour with a guitar case full of paperback books.

“Donal keeps on inviting me along to various Rory Gallagher festivals, and I can never make it. One of these years, I will make my pilgrimage to Cork and pay my respects to Rory Gallagher.”

On the subject of pilgrimages, I divulge that, like many Rebus fans, I have paid a visit to the detective’s favourite watering hole in Edinburgh, The Oxford Bar, where I half expected to find the detective — or his originator — sitting in a corner.

“People send mail to me, and address it to Ian Rankin, Oxford Bar, Scotland, from all over the world and it usually gets there. It is extraordinary.

“The first time I walked in there, I was just starting to write the first Rebus novel, and I looked around and thought ‘this is where he would drink’.”

There’s no bells and whistles — no food, no music, the telly is never on, it’s really just about drink and conversation.

“If you don’t want a conversation, you can just go and sit in a corner and nobody will bother you. I thought that’s exactly what Rebus wants.”

I wonder if the owners and staff ever get annoyed by the procession of Rebus and Rankin fans.

“Oh no, they love it. The bar staff get slightly annoyed if fans walk in, take a photograph and then walk out again. 

“They really want you to hang around and at least buy a pint — and if you don’t buy a pint, put one in the till for me.”

As for the Oxford Bar’s most famous patron, what’s next?

“I have no idea. I never know if I’ve got another Rebus story left in me, if he’s actually going to still be in the building next time I come calling. 

“He’s getting older; by now he might even be 80 but, in my head, he’s early 70s. It’s an increasing challenge for me as to how I can inject him into a murder inquiry or investigation. 

“But that challenge has kept me on my toes.”

Fans of Rankin and Rebus will raise a glass to that challenge continuing.