Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin
Ian James Rankin, OBE, DL, FRSEis a Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 April 1960
short-love reading writing
I love short stories - reading and writing them. The best short stories distill all the potency of a novel into a small but heady draught. They are perfect reading material for the bus or train or for a lunchtime break. Everything extraneous has been strained off by the author. The best short stories pack the heft of any novel, yet resonate like poetry.
book writing asking-questions
I started writing novels while an undergraduate student, in an attempt to make sense of the city of Edinburgh, using a detective as my protagonist. Each book hopefully adds another piece to the jigsaw that is modern Scotland, asking questions about the nation's politics, economy, psyche and history ... and perhaps pointing towards its possible future.
book adventure writing
I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.
book writing thinking
I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.
writing fiction scottish
Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.
book taken writing
I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.
lighting months nine pub
I have him going into a pub and lighting up, and then being told by a barman that he has got only nine months to go before he has to stop.
character good gregarious music musical reader shorthand small taste whether
Music is a good shorthand way to delineate character. If you want to tell the reader a lot about a character in a small space, just tell them what their musical taste is. You'll get their age, their background, whether they're gregarious or a loner.
good music shorthand
Music is a good shorthand way to delineate character,
auction books early failings feeling miserable sign strange
It's a strange feeling to see one's books come up at auction and also, to some extent, a sign of my miserable early failings as an author.
growing perils pitfalls
It's a young man's book, all about the perils and pitfalls of growing up.
bosses clause seems whether wish
Whether Rebus's 'skills' are ones his bosses would wish retained is a moot point, but it seems I have my 'get-in' clause should I need one.
beginning crimes fact forget lives people profoundly taken themselves unique whose
When a murder is satisfied, it isn't the beginning of the story; it's the middle. We shouldn't forget that fact because murder has ripples. You never go back to being the same. The people that investigate these crimes never go back to being the same as they were before they started the investigation. The people's whose lives have been affected, the victim's families, even the murderer themselves are profoundly changed. That's why murder is still the most interesting crime for us to write about, because it is the only crime where something unique is taken away from the world, something that can't be replaced.
almost beasts closed crime harvey jack novels sex wrote
Jack Harvey wrote thrillers, which are very different beasts to crime novels: lavish, almost pornographic descriptions of weaponry; sex scenes; world travel. These things were closed to me in the kind of crime novels I was writing.