By Appekka Fernando

A veritable treat for Crime Fiction aficionados as well as for modern literature buffs, Ian Rankin was in Sri Lanka for the Galle Literary Festival. For the few of us who couldn’t catch him in Galle, we were lucky enough to hear him speak at Park Street Mews about his relationship with his most famous character, Rebus.

Ian Rankin has had to show photo ID to prove that it actually was him that wrote the 18 John Rebus novels within the past 20 years to tourists who come to the now world famous, Oxford Bar in search of the grizzly bad tempered man that penned their favourite detective. “It’s very hard for people to imagine that the well adjusted man sitting in a corner of the pub doing the crossword, could have written Rebus,” he says with a certain degree of humour. “Actually, crime writers are incredibly well adjusted, they deal with all their issues on paper,” he said before adding “you don’t want to cross a crime writer though, because he/she WILL kill you...in their next novel.”

 “Rebus is a kind of picture puzzle,” Rankin explains his choice of name for his main character, “I was young and thought it was incredibly clever to name this guy after a puzzle, I didn’t realise that I would have to keep explaining to people how and where I got the name from.” Knots and Crosses, Rankin’s first published novel, indeed has the characteristics of a puzzle where as the book goes on, we see the pieces start to fit together. For a book he considered was “strictly a one off deal,” and didn’t believe would do well, it proved to be a king maker.

Today Rankin is known by literary greats such as James Ellroy, as the king of ‘Tartan Noir’. What does this mean for the simple, well adjusted and unassuming writer? It means countless international book tours, TV and movie scripts, awards and accolades as well as a recently released criminal wanting lessons on writing crime fiction, “now you can understand why I prefer to do so many foreign tours!” he jokes. Despite all the demands on his time, Rankin still finds time to expand his literary empire. Since Rebus’s retirement, which we saw in ‘Exit Music’, Rankin hasn’t wasted any time in coming out with his new novel “Doors Open” set in Edinburgh, but a city that doesn’t strike the reader as a hard or cynical place, the way we used to see it with Rebus. Rankin explains this as being because the main policeman of the story, Detective Inspector Ransome, isn’t as old or as emotionally twisted as Rebus. Reviewers both love and hate the book, but they generally agree that as stories go, it’s fast paced and difficult to put down.

As opposed to the aging nature of his character Rebus, Ian Rankin believes that writers are like Peter Pan, “We never grow up,” he says. As a boy he used to make up elaborate stories and turn them in to comic books about an imaginary pop group, the Kaputs, headed by lead singer Ian Kaput “we would have a top ten hit ever week!” he says. As a response to the child in him, Rankin was also responsible for a graphic novel ‘Dark Entries’ that features another policeman John Constantine, only this one dabbles in the occult.

Ian Rankin has this piece of advice for budding writers, “read a lot, all good writers read. Its how you find out the different ways a plot can come together, styles, and inspiration.”He gains inspiration from reading books by Robert Louis Stevenson, James Hogg – he wanted a recreate the gothic feeling he got from reading ‘Confessions of a Justified Sinner’, which is how the Rebus series began.

He wasn’t always the fountain from which fascinating and best selling stories spout from. He has in turn worked as a swineherd, alcohol tester, tax man and punk musician. Even now, while signing my book, he tells me that if he was able to play any instruments, he’d never had become a writer. Lucky for us, he can’t pluck a chord.

Ever the good publicist, when asked by a member of his enthralled audience what his favourite book was, “my publisher would like me to say it’s my new book, but my absolute favourite to write was ‘Black and Blue’, because by that time I had got the hang of the police work and developed Rebus as a character, and it was a lot of fun to write.” However Rankin didn’t hesitate two seconds before adding, “Also my new book is my favourite...and the one I’m writing at the moment.”

So we’ll have to wait with abated breath along with another half a million people, waiting to grab it within its first month of release, so we can read the new direction in which Rankin is taking his Crime Fiction series.
Until then, we have the memories of his visit to Sri Lanka and book stores pack full of his Rebus novels to keep us sated.