Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Daniel James and I'm back to share
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This Schwartz Meetia's weekly books podcast.
Speaker 1: Hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
Speaker 1: and around the world. This week, Michael is chatting with
Speaker 1: best selling crime writer Ian Rankin. As always, Michael is
Speaker 1: here to tell us a little bit more about the episode.
Speaker 2: Hi Michael, Daniel James.
Speaker 1: Hello, So Michael, today's guest is one of the most
Speaker 1: well regarded crime fiction writers in the world, and you
Speaker 1: were lucky enough to chat with him at the Sydney
Speaker 1: Writers Festival.
Speaker 2: Before we talk.
Speaker 1: About Ian Rankin, can you share a little bit about
Speaker 1: when your love for a good crime novel began.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've always been a crime fiction tragic. I think
Speaker 2: when I was a teenager and us first learning to read,
Speaker 2: I was reading kind of classics that were foisted upon
Speaker 2: me and ran out of age appropriate stuff pretty quickly,
Speaker 2: and then got onto Agatha Christie or the Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 2: books and found myself completely hooked. So those earliest ones
Speaker 2: were definitely in that puzzle box tradition. The mystery that
Speaker 2: is resolved at the end and you get the twist
Speaker 2: or you get the reveal. And that was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. But the more I read, the more the
Speaker 2: capaciousness of the crime novel struck me. So that it
Speaker 2: could be like an English country town cozy, or it
Speaker 2: could be a hard boiled el a noir, and the
Speaker 2: contrast between them. You know, you could go Raymond Chandler
Speaker 2: on the one hand, or you could go PD James
Speaker 2: or Ruth Rendell on the other, and so that mix
Speaker 2: really appeal. The other thing that was great is if
Speaker 2: you found a crime writer you liked, there was generally
Speaker 2: a reasonable chance that there was a dozen books in
Speaker 2: their backlist and a kind of new book each year
Speaker 2: by them that could keep you going. So for a
Speaker 2: voracious reader, it was this wonderful promise that not only
Speaker 2: was it a world that you liked, but it was
Speaker 2: one that you could return to again and again and again.
Speaker 2: And amongst those there were a couple in particular that
Speaker 2: really grabbed me. One was a British writer called Reginald
Speaker 2: Hill who wrote these procedurals set in Yorkshire that were
Speaker 2: really great. But the other one that I really loved
Speaker 2: was Ian Rankin.
Speaker 1: And Rekon has become a household name now, isn't he.
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe he's especially well known for his
Speaker 1: character Detective John Reebis, who features him more than twenty
Speaker 1: of his novels. What happens in this latest one?
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things Rankin often reflects on was
Speaker 2: that it took him seven books to become an overnight success.
Speaker 2: You know, once your series is in the kind of
Speaker 2: twenty odd book territory, you know that it's just going
Speaker 2: and going and going. There was a point at which
Speaker 2: I'm going to get this slightly wrong, but there's a
Speaker 2: point of which I think eight of the ten books
Speaker 2: on the bestseller list in the Scottish Times were by
Speaker 2: arn Rankin, and I think it was like something insane
Speaker 2: like ten percent of all crime fiction being sold in
Speaker 2: the UK was by him. You know, he's a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: He sold forty million books to date, He's been translated
Speaker 2: into thirty seven languages. He's got a knighthood. He's Ian
Speaker 2: Rankin now, and this newest book is the twenty fifth
Speaker 2: in the series. Well, Midnight in Blue and John ReBs,
Speaker 2: at the end of the last book was arrested. He's
Speaker 2: in jail and he's been called on to assist in
Speaker 2: solving the ultimate crime novel scenario, the Locked Room Mystery.
Speaker 2: It's pretty great and it's just very nice to know
Speaker 2: that John Reavers is not done yet. And just quickly
Speaker 2: before we get to Sir ar Ragan and John Reebs
Speaker 2: and all things crime and wonder, I did want to say,
Speaker 2: Daniel to anyone who's enjoyed listening to read this in
Speaker 2: their seven am feed, We're coming to an end. It's
Speaker 2: tumultuous times, but I read this will no longer be
Speaker 2: happening with Schwartz Media. There is a chance it will return,
Speaker 2: and so I would encourage you, if you'd enjoyed listening
Speaker 2: to it in seven Am, subscribe to the read this
Speaker 2: feed separately. That's where you'll find that if it's going
Speaker 2: to come back to life in the weeks and months ahead.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment, John Reebis will outlive
Speaker 1: in Raken.
Speaker 2: I was lucky enough to sit down with Rankin Sorry
Speaker 2: sir Ian at this year's Sydney Writer's Festival just a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago. I have to say I came
Speaker 2: to Midnight and Blue and my first thought was that
Speaker 2: the title immediately evoked for me the eighth book in
Speaker 2: the Rebis series, Black and Blue. An extraordinary book, but
Speaker 2: a book where Rebus was laid as low, really as
Speaker 2: you'd cast him at any point, and it was the
Speaker 2: first in a sequence in several books where every time
Speaker 2: you thought he couldn't go lower, you really did give
Speaker 2: him another kicking. So, knowing that he was in prison
Speaker 2: in Midnight and Blue, seeing this residence in the title,
Speaker 2: I assumed to find a broken man, and instead Rebus
Speaker 2: is almost as jaunty as we've seen him for years.
Speaker 2: The man's enjoying prison? Is he in?
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's enjoying prison. I think the structure.
Speaker 3: He likes his life to have a structure. And when
Speaker 3: he had to leave the police force because he was
Speaker 3: of an age where he had to go, suddenly his
Speaker 3: life hud no structure, and he still felt he ought
Speaker 3: to be useful. Did he still have a purpose in
Speaker 3: the world? Could he still be useful in prison? He
Speaker 3: has a purpose. His purpose is to avoid being murdered
Speaker 3: by the many bad men in there who don't like
Speaker 3: the fact that a cop is in jail with them.
Speaker 3: And then he's given another purpose, which is there is
Speaker 3: a lot to sell mystery. Someone has been killed in
Speaker 3: a cell, and he is best placed to solve this
Speaker 3: before the prison explodes, because the cons all think it
Speaker 3: must be a warder. Warder, I'll think it must be
Speaker 3: a con. So they're getting ready to clash and into
Speaker 3: this kind of powder keg you throw Rabus, so suddenly
Speaker 3: he's up in fun while also watching his front on
Speaker 3: his back for people about to stab him or throttle
Speaker 3: him or kill him. And it was the one thing
Speaker 3: that you know, I do a lot of research. I
Speaker 3: don't do a lot of research. I do enough research
Speaker 3: that I can persuade the reader. I do a lot
Speaker 3: of research. But a friend of mine's a photographer. He
Speaker 3: knew the governor in Edinburgh Prison, who thankfully, as it
Speaker 3: turns out, was about to retire, so he was much
Speaker 3: more open and receptive to my questions and might otherwise
Speaker 3: be the case. And he took me around the prison
Speaker 3: and showed me and everything else. But the first thing
Speaker 3: he said was Rebus wouldn't come here. There's no way
Speaker 3: you would take an ex Edinburgh cop and put him
Speaker 3: in the Edinburgh prison because he would be surrounded by
Speaker 3: people he would know who would want ill done to him.
Speaker 3: So I said, well, I don't want him to be
Speaker 3: anywhere else. He's got to come here. So we discussed
Speaker 3: that for a while and we found a way. He said,
Speaker 3: well he would come into the Kindese segregation wing, and
Speaker 3: I went, okay, that's good. And then I found a
Speaker 3: way to get him from the segregation went into the
Speaker 3: general population, and I was happy. And when the governor
Speaker 3: eventually read the book, it was a couple of tiny
Speaker 3: things he thought I'd got wrong, But there was nothing
Speaker 3: major that you thought I'd got wrong.
Speaker 2: You did set yourself in this book, and it's the
Speaker 2: nature of crime in a prison, but you set yourself
Speaker 2: the crime writer's greatest challenge, which is the locker room mystery.
Speaker 2: Not only do you have this kind of pressure cooker environment,
Speaker 2: but you actually have somewhat unusually for one of your
Speaker 2: Rabis books, a puzzle box element to it as well.
Speaker 2: Was a fun putting that together.
Speaker 3: Okay, first thing that happened was the previous book, Heartfully Headstones,
Speaker 3: I thought was the last book. Now I've thought this before,
Speaker 3: but I thought this is a last book. He's on trial,
Speaker 3: he's in the dock, sentences about to be pronounced the end.
Speaker 3: It's a lovely riking back falls moment. And of course
Speaker 3: I will only ever be the second best crime writer
Speaker 3: to come out of Edinburgh because Conan Doyle was born
Speaker 3: and brought up in Edinburgh. So I thought it's a
Speaker 3: lovely thing to end the Rebis series with a raking
Speaker 3: back falls. But then people start to say, well, what
Speaker 3: happened next? And I started to think, what would happen next?
Speaker 3: He would be found guilty. If he's found guilty, he's
Speaker 3: going to go to prison. That's interesting that immediately you've
Speaker 3: got tension and drama, and it's a new setting. It's
Speaker 3: a new challenge for me. It's a new setting for
Speaker 3: Reebis and a new set of challenges for me. This guy,
Speaker 3: who's in his seventies with health issues is going to
Speaker 3: go to an alien environment, and in that alien environment,
Speaker 3: I can have a discussion with him about good and evil,
Speaker 3: because Reebis in the earlier books especially thought they were
Speaker 3: just these polarized things that were good and evil. If
Speaker 3: you were a bad person, you were irredeemably a bad person.
Speaker 3: In jail, some of the prisoners say to him, what
Speaker 3: do you think you're here now? Are we really the
Speaker 3: monsters you thought we were when you put us in here.
Speaker 3: So that was great to be able to have that
Speaker 3: discussion with him and possibly change his mind. So all
Speaker 3: that was going on, and then I thought, well, what's
Speaker 3: he going to do in prison? He's going to have
Speaker 3: to solve a murder. And then because people are locked
Speaker 3: up for large parts of the day, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm murdering a lot sell. How is it possible? I
Speaker 3: have no idea who did it? I don't know, but
Speaker 3: let's start and see. So when I started the book,
Speaker 3: I had no idea how this would happen. I had
Speaker 3: a vague idea because I've been given a tour of
Speaker 3: the cells, so I knew certain things about the layout
Speaker 3: of the cells and how certain things it happened.
Speaker 2: Can I ask, just on the topic of not knowing
Speaker 2: when you started, is it true that when you were
Speaker 2: was it Hanging Garden, you finished your first draft and
Speaker 2: you still hadn't worked out who the killer was?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean this is often roughly the case. I'll
Speaker 3: be typing away and I'll put a nice, big capitalized
Speaker 3: note to myself, fix this letter, you know, And towards
Speaker 3: the end of the first draft of the Hanging Garden.
Speaker 3: I still didn't know who the killer was. And then
Speaker 3: I read the first draft. I sat and read it
Speaker 3: through and went, oh, hang on a minute, it must
Speaker 3: be you. So it was really this the beginning of
Speaker 3: the it was the second draft.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by that. I'm in a book like The
Speaker 2: Hanging Garden where the themes and the crime are so
Speaker 2: deeply embedded in each other. You know, the ideas as
Speaker 2: you say that question about good and evil that permeates
Speaker 2: the series, those kind of binaries of the different sides
Speaker 2: of not just Rabist, but of all the characters in
Speaker 2: the crime. It seems remarkable to me that it's almost
Speaker 2: incidental who's responsible for the inciding incident.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's incidental. I think you've got a
Speaker 3: range of possible suspects and motives, and I wait for
Speaker 3: the book to tell me which one is most relevant
Speaker 3: or is going to be most surprising to the reader
Speaker 3: while still being credible. Yeah, I do trust to that.
Speaker 3: It's almost like the story is up there, swirling around,
Speaker 3: and it descends and decides I'm the person to write
Speaker 3: this story down and tell this story, and it will
Speaker 3: tell me where to go. And almost always if I've
Speaker 3: got a fixed idea of where a book should go,
Speaker 3: the novel says differently. The novel says no, no, no.
Speaker 3: There was a what was let me think what was it?
Speaker 3: It was set in darkness, was going to be the
Speaker 3: first book of a trilogy within the series, and it
Speaker 3: would look at the formation of the Scottish Parliament. So
Speaker 3: in book one there would be a guy who is
Speaker 3: running to be a member of Parliament in the new
Speaker 3: Scottish Parliament. In book two, the parliament is up and running.
Speaker 3: In book three the new building is complete and everything
Speaker 3: in there. So this character would be in all three books.
Speaker 3: He was dead by page fifty, and I didn't want
Speaker 3: that to happen. This was going to be a trilogy
Speaker 3: with this guy in it. But the book just said,
Speaker 3: this guy is extraneous, you know. And so I went, well,
Speaker 3: I've got yet another body, and I don't know who
Speaker 3: did it, you know. So I'll wait and hope that
Speaker 3: the book will tell me. And every time I've gone
Speaker 3: along with the book's idea of what is going to
Speaker 3: make a more interesting story or a meteor story, the
Speaker 3: book has been correct.
Speaker 2: Has that always been approached to writing, or is that
Speaker 2: a trust in process that comes only with time and
Speaker 2: success and saying that it works for you.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I've tried teaching creative writing and
Speaker 3: I don't think it can be done. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think you can make a good writer better, but I
Speaker 3: don't think you can turn someone into a writer. I
Speaker 3: just I've always you know, I've always written, ever since
Speaker 3: I was a little kid. I've written stories and made
Speaker 3: stuff up for my own satisfaction and without thinking too
Speaker 3: hard about the craft that comes later on. You know,
Speaker 3: the second and third draft is when you try and
Speaker 3: make elegant sentences, and you try and add some flesh
Speaker 3: to the bones of the characters and solidify the theme
Speaker 3: that you're trying to explore in the book. But the
Speaker 3: first draft is a ragged beast, very much so, which
Speaker 3: is why nobody sees it except me. And that's always
Speaker 3: worked for me. That has always worked. I know other
Speaker 3: writers do it. I mean what my near neighbor as
Speaker 3: was in Edinburgh until I moved because I couldn't take
Speaker 3: the competition. Alexander McCall smith only writes one draft. That's it.
Speaker 3: It's not allowed to be edited, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: and he writes quick as well, and yet somehow it works.
Speaker 3: So everybody's different. But I found a way that worked
Speaker 3: for me quite early on, and I've stuck to it.
Speaker 2: I have to digress briefly. Your former neighbor alex Anna
Speaker 2: McCall smith wrote you into one of his books, So
Speaker 2: you're going to get revenge? Yeah, have him appeard.
Speaker 3: He's actually written me into more than one. He's sitting
Speaker 3: in my hot tub in Edinburgh when I used to
Speaker 3: have a hot tub. He had me getting hit by
Speaker 3: an arrow that was fired from some archers and the meadows.
Speaker 3: He had my books appear in the wind of a
Speaker 3: second hand bookshop. He's and every time he does it,
Speaker 3: I see revenge. Sandy is a dish served very cold.
Speaker 2: I look forward to that. I'm surprised in prison.
Speaker 3: Nemesis is coming. Shit, I should have done that.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the idea of the moment before this book
Speaker 2: being one of many possible finishing points for Reebis and
Speaker 2: the Rackenbach Falls idea, and one of the things that
Speaker 2: made that seem possible at the end of the last
Speaker 2: book was the death of Big jer Cafferty. And I'm
Speaker 2: sorry that's a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read it,
Speaker 2: but it's a book ago, it's time to catch up.
Speaker 2: But you know, Cafferty was such a key figure since
Speaker 2: he first appeared, I think in the fourth book in
Speaker 2: the series, and had only grown in stature, only grown
Speaker 2: as a kind of counterweight and almost close to Rebus's
Speaker 2: kind of significant other by these later books. How hard
Speaker 2: was it to let him go?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're correct. Cafferty first appears in book three as
Speaker 3: a very minor character. I needed Rebis to be in
Speaker 3: Glasgow to find a clue. Why was he in Glasgow?
Speaker 3: He's giving evidence in a court case. Who's he giving
Speaker 3: evidence against a Glasgow gangster? In book three, Cafferty is
Speaker 3: a Glasgow gangster, and he kind of got under my
Speaker 3: skin and I thought, oh, he's a useful can as
Speaker 3: you say, a useful sort of almost like kenan Abel
Speaker 3: or Jacqueline Hyde, or he's the devil tempting Reebis to
Speaker 3: come to the dark side.
Speaker 2: Nolan Laam, Yeah, Nolan layam.
Speaker 3: It were which one is, which we'll discuss later on.
Speaker 3: And so I brought him back after a few books,
Speaker 3: but I'd forgotten he was a Glasgow gangster. So he
Speaker 3: actually has two completely different life stories. In book three
Speaker 3: he grew up in Glasgow. By book seven or eight
Speaker 3: he grew up in Edinburgh and as an Edinburgh gangster.
Speaker 3: This is how much research I do before I write
Speaker 3: the books. But he was very useful to me. Is
Speaker 3: that sort of devil whispering in Reebus's ear. And also
Speaker 3: they're from very similar backgrounds. They understand each other very well.
Speaker 3: Either one of them their life could have gone in
Speaker 3: a different way that would have made them more like
Speaker 3: the other. So all of that has going on with them,
Speaker 3: and he represents all the bad stuff. Cafferty can represent
Speaker 3: all the bad stuff that's happening in Edinburgh, in Scotland
Speaker 3: and the world. But Reebus and he have this empathy.
Speaker 3: They understand each other so well that you're never sure
Speaker 3: if they're going to end up being best friends or
Speaker 3: destroy each other throughout the series. And to answer your question, eventually,
Speaker 3: when I handed the manuscript over to my agent of
Speaker 3: Heartfully heads Owes, Cafferty survived, He didn't die, and it
Speaker 3: was my agent who said, I think it's time. He said,
Speaker 3: go back and look at that final scene. I think
Speaker 3: he dies. And I went back and looked at it
Speaker 3: and went it's a big deal. But okay, So for
Speaker 3: the first time in my life, I took my agent's
Speaker 3: advice and it was traumatic. And the nice thing about
Speaker 3: putting Rebis in prison in this new book is we
Speaker 3: don't have to dwell on the aftermath of it too much.
Speaker 3: There's too much other stuff going on that Rebis isn't
Speaker 3: sitting in his flat at dead of night thinking too
Speaker 3: much about Cafferty. That is for possibly a future book.
Speaker 2: Coming up after the Break and Chees, the genesis of
Speaker 2: his lead Detective's nine, and why he never tires of
Speaker 2: writing about Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Ian Rankin had never planned to become a crime writer.
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen eighty seven. He was a young Muriel Sparks,
Speaker 2: scholar of all things, and very earnestly trying to rewrite
Speaker 2: Robert Louis Stevenson to have his own go a Doctor
Speaker 2: Jekyl and Mister Hyde. Despite the fact that this first novel,
Speaker 2: Knots and Crosses made relatively little waves at the time,
Speaker 2: the Crime Writers' Association wrote to Ann and asked him
Speaker 2: to join, and he noticed increasingly as he went into
Speaker 2: bookshops in Edinburgh. His debut novel wasn't on the shelf
Speaker 2: in the Scottish literature section, despite his deepest hopes. Instead
Speaker 2: it sat in the crime section, beside Ruth Rendell and P. D. James.
Speaker 2: And that was the moment that Ann thought he'd better
Speaker 2: start reading this stuff.
Speaker 3: I think I'm still the only crime writer I know
Speaker 3: who wasn't a fan of the genre before they started
Speaker 3: writing it. I had the only crime novel I remember
Speaker 3: reading I was maybe twelve or thirteen, was Shaft, and
Speaker 3: I only read it because I wasn't all enough to
Speaker 3: see the movie.
Speaker 2: Is he John raebis because of John Shaft?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, John Shaft. John riebis definitely, and Riebus because
Speaker 3: of Riebus is a picture puzzle. It's a little series
Speaker 3: of drawings with letters taken away or added. So, for example,
Speaker 3: if you had a drawing of an ear and above
Speaker 3: it was the E with a line through it, that
Speaker 3: meant all you wanted was a R. And then someone
Speaker 3: rowing a boat row that gives you r RO and
Speaker 3: you went on from there. So when he was getting
Speaker 3: sent these little picture puzzles in book one, I thought,
Speaker 3: being an English literature student studying semiotics and deconstruction, I'll
Speaker 3: give him a name that means puzzle.
Speaker 2: So if you started the series now, he could be
Speaker 2: called John Sadoka.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well John Tetris.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't have a ring to it. I've got
Speaker 2: to be and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've told this story before, but I
Speaker 3: love it. I mean, having invented that name, I then
Speaker 3: spent years explaining to people because it's not a Scottish name,
Speaker 3: how I came up with it. We had spent ten
Speaker 3: years away from Edinburgh. My wife and I lived in London,
Speaker 3: then lived in France, went back and I met a
Speaker 3: second hand bookseller and he said, oh, come and have
Speaker 3: a drink with me and my mates on Friday night.
Speaker 3: So I went to this pub and his mates included
Speaker 3: an ex police officer and a guy called Joe Riebis
Speaker 3: And I said to him, really, and he pronounced it
Speaker 3: Rebus and he said, it's a Polish surname. So from
Speaker 3: that book eleven or twelve on, I suddenly mentioned Riebus,
Speaker 3: halving Polish roots. I didn't know until then.
Speaker 2: There's that research again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Joe said to me, he said, I thought
Speaker 3: you got my name from the phone directory And I said, no,
Speaker 3: I didn't think of Riebus was even a real name.
Speaker 3: So he got the telephone directory from the barman and
Speaker 3: we went through the Edinburgh phone directory. Rebus j for Joe,
Speaker 3: his address genuinely rank and drive.
Speaker 2: Good, serendipitous.
Speaker 3: You could not make that up. You couldn't make it up.
Speaker 2: That is wildly good. It does strike mean. You mentioned
Speaker 2: that it was about a decade that you and your
Speaker 2: wife lived out of Scotland, and that decade the overlay
Speaker 2: is best. I understand that. I think some of those books,
Speaker 2: the portrait of Edinburgh in particular, is particularly acute, and
Speaker 2: I'm curious about the difference for you of writing about
Speaker 2: it as a place from a distance as opposed to
Speaker 2: writing about it when you were there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The very first Rebus book, nottson Crosses, was written
Speaker 3: in Edinburgh in the National Library of Scotland while I
Speaker 3: was supposedly doing a PhD on Murial Spark. Then we
Speaker 3: moved to London because the money ran out for the PhD,
Speaker 3: and my wife got a job in London as a
Speaker 3: civil servant, so she supported me while I tried to
Speaker 3: write books two, three and four. And that's why book
Speaker 3: three is set in.
Speaker 2: London and Rabis hates it.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I thought, I'm hating it here, I'll channel
Speaker 3: that hate to him and he can load on my behalf.
Speaker 3: And then we moved to France and we were there
Speaker 3: for six years. So quite a lot of the books
Speaker 3: were written in this French farmhouse, and yeah, it was
Speaker 3: Edinburgh then became a city of the imagination. I couldn't
Speaker 3: just walk out my front door and do the research.
Speaker 3: I didn't remember remembering stuff, and I would go back.
Speaker 3: I'd go back to Scotland once or twice a year
Speaker 3: and do the research, look at places and make sure
Speaker 3: I'd described them properly. But it was useful, I think
Speaker 3: to that distance. When I got worried was when we
Speaker 3: were moving back. You know, haven't been away for ten years.
Speaker 3: A though, if I go back to Edinburgh, can I
Speaker 3: still write about the place or will it be more
Speaker 3: like journalism or reportage? Can I write about it imaginatively
Speaker 3: when I'm living there? And I think the first book
Speaker 3: I wrote when I got back was the one to
Speaker 3: Hanging Garden, which was partly setting well had the story
Speaker 3: behind it was a story of something that happened in
Speaker 3: or a door in France during World War Two, a
Speaker 3: place near where we lived. So I was kind of
Speaker 3: reaching back to France in a way in that book,
Speaker 3: as well as making sure that I was it was
Speaker 3: an Edinburgh book. I don't know how important it is
Speaker 3: to be living in Edinburgh and writing about Edinburgh. It's
Speaker 3: such an interesting city to me. It's a it's so
Speaker 3: much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Speaker 3: You can walk around it in a day, as you know,
Speaker 3: you can walk around it in a day, but you
Speaker 3: could spend your whole life trying to understand it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't in one of your books that I read the
Speaker 2: phrase that Edinburgh was.
Speaker 3: All for name for no nickers. That's I mean, that's
Speaker 3: a that's a yeah, that's a that's a Glasgow saying
Speaker 3: about Edinburgh. It's all for coton no nickers, or is
Speaker 3: one historian of Edinburgh put it as a place of
Speaker 3: public probity and private vice, which brings us back to
Speaker 3: Jack l and Hyde again. So anyway, so that was
Speaker 3: what I thought I was doing with the book, was
Speaker 3: trying to do this sort of social history of Edinburgh
Speaker 3: and at the same time take on some pretty pretty big,
Speaker 3: hopefully I thought, pretty big questions about good and evil,
Speaker 3: and a detective is a perfect means of investigating the
Speaker 3: city from top to bomb.
Speaker 2: Well, your detective can be in a politician's house one
Speaker 2: minute and a commission flats the next.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I mean a journalist can do that. But
Speaker 3: a journalist you can see no.
Speaker 2: To them, and you tend to kill off your journalists.
Speaker 3: I do. Yeah, Wow, I don't always kill off my journalists.
Speaker 3: But you're right, You're right they have. Yeah. One of
Speaker 3: the many Earily books didn't last too long, did they?
Speaker 2: Coming back again to that idea of public probity private
Speaker 2: vice is by setting the books around a police officer
Speaker 2: and around the system, you get to tell a pretty
Speaker 2: comprehensive story about the failures of that system, the ways
Speaker 2: in which it's corrupted or perverted or doesn't do what
Speaker 2: it professes to do. Has your attitude to law enforcement
Speaker 2: a crime to those kind of stories shifted in there
Speaker 2: now almost.
Speaker 3: Forty years Yeah, I mean, I think crime in general. Now,
Speaker 3: if you're writing about a police officer, you're very conscious
Speaker 3: of the fact that the public don't necessarily see them
Speaker 3: as the Clint Eastwood figure riding into a lawless place
Speaker 3: and bringing order from chaos. You know, the public general
Speaker 3: public see them as being conflicted corrupted, covering up for
Speaker 3: one another being part of the problem, and a lot
Speaker 3: of younger crime writers are not using cops as their heroes,
Speaker 3: and those of us who still do use cops as
Speaker 3: our heroes, like Michael Connolly and me, are very conscious
Speaker 3: we write about corruption. And the previous Reabis book was
Speaker 3: about bad things he had done in his younger days
Speaker 3: as part of this kind of group of police officers
Speaker 3: and had got away with because in the past you
Speaker 3: could get away with stuff that you couldn't get away
Speaker 3: with today because of the technology and the surveillance and
Speaker 3: the mobile phones and the cameras and everything else. The
Speaker 3: stuff you could get away with in the past, and
Speaker 3: you know would he feels bad about it. I think
Speaker 3: Reabis does feel guilty about the fact that he didn't
Speaker 3: always use the correct legal procedures to get a result,
Speaker 3: but he feels he did usually get the right person.
Speaker 3: He usually put manage to put someone away for something.
Speaker 3: But he feels bad about that. But that is something
Speaker 3: I think the people who write about police officers have
Speaker 3: really taken on board.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Policing keeps changing. I mean, it really annoys me how
Speaker 3: much the nomenclature changes. So Malcolm Fox when we first
Speaker 3: met him was working for Complaints and conduct. That was
Speaker 3: what internal affairs was called. Then it changed it morphedin
Speaker 3: is something else, I think maybe even internal affairs. Then
Speaker 3: it morphedin, it is something else, and now it's something
Speaker 3: else again. So in this new book, when Riebis is
Speaker 3: talking to him, he said, so what you call this week?
Speaker 3: You know? And I've got to keep on top of
Speaker 3: that because the people who read my books know that
Speaker 3: these things are policing is changing.
Speaker 2: It's time the Joe Rabis story. You just write what
Speaker 2: you like and it'll come true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that has happened in the past that I've written about,
Speaker 3: something that has come true.
Speaker 2: Weirdly, I'm glad you mentioned Malcolm Fox because he is
Speaker 2: a kind of embodiment of that idea of working within
Speaker 2: the system or not. And you introduced him in the
Speaker 2: Complaints after the first time you attempted to finish writing
Speaker 2: about Rebus unsuccessfully, and it seems to me that you
Speaker 2: set him up, introduced him a potential new protagonist, and
Speaker 2: either you wound up not liking Malcolm very much, or
Speaker 2: the ribus in you just couldn't help yourself. And so
Speaker 2: Malcolm moved pretty quickly from a potential new protagonist to
Speaker 2: an antagonist. And I'm curious about how deliberate that was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I you know, haven't decided that Rebus would have
Speaker 3: to retire. My wife said, great, you've got freedom not
Speaker 3: to write any Kenny book you want to rate. What
Speaker 3: do you want to write about? I said, what a
Speaker 3: rate book? Cops? So I'm going to have another cop,
Speaker 3: but I don't want anybody to think they're getting Rebus
Speaker 3: two point zero or Ribus Light. He's got to be
Speaker 3: a very different kind of cop from Rebus. So internal Affairs.
Speaker 3: I thought that's interesting, because the kind of cop who
Speaker 3: makes a good internal affairs detective is the antithesis of Rebus.
Speaker 3: So Malcolm Fox came along. Now the problem is, if
Speaker 3: you are working that job, you've got to be cleaner
Speaker 3: than clean, whiter than white, never cross the line. Boring, right,
Speaker 3: fairly boring. So book two he's trying to be a maverick,
Speaker 3: but he's not very good at it. And then I
Speaker 3: got an idea for a cold case novel. And there
Speaker 3: was a unit in Edinburgh staff by retired detectives that
Speaker 3: investigated cold cases, and I thought, oh, that's what Rebus
Speaker 3: is doing. He would not go gentle into that good night.
Speaker 3: He would not retire from the police and open a
Speaker 3: bar or a bed and breakfast or move to Marbea.
Speaker 3: He would want to still feel like a detective. So
Speaker 3: I brought him back for standing in another man's grave.
Speaker 3: And then I thought, the one person who wouldn't want
Speaker 3: to see Rebus back on the force is Malcolm Fox.
Speaker 3: So Fox did go from being protagonist to antagonist because
Speaker 3: suddenly it was Reebus's story. And the more that I
Speaker 3: continue to write about Raebus, the more Fox became the antagonist.
Speaker 3: And that was an interesting turnaround. He's tried several times
Speaker 3: to be a man of action, to be a frontline
Speaker 3: police officer, and he's not very good at it. He's
Speaker 3: a yes man, a toady, a pen pusher. He's a
Speaker 3: very good administrator. But the fact that he always tries
Speaker 3: to be a man of action becomes kind of hilarious
Speaker 3: to me. He's just not very good at it.
Speaker 2: Just but that I would rate a series about Rabis
Speaker 2: managing a bid and breakfast and handling Alexander McCole smith
Speaker 2: as a guest.
Speaker 3: Now now you're talking maybe a short story I could
Speaker 3: get a short story of that.
Speaker 2: There's a whole thing now.
Speaker 3: I keep thinking, you know, the ribis now in his dotage.
Speaker 3: All I can do really is hand him over to
Speaker 3: Richard Osman, who you know, to just say move him
Speaker 3: into your care home. Richard, does you know you've got
Speaker 3: an ex spy, You've got this, You've got that, have
Speaker 3: an ex cop.
Speaker 2: So you've been living with John Rabis for almost forty
Speaker 2: years now, more than once you've tried to shake him
Speaker 2: off or you've tried to move on, but it's proved
Speaker 2: very difficult. I think we can see how he's changed
Speaker 2: in the pages over the years. How has writing him
Speaker 2: changed you?
Speaker 3: I mean it's I mean he's made me a good living,
Speaker 3: which is amazing to me. I've known him longer than
Speaker 3: I've known most of my friends. He lives inside my head.
Speaker 3: He's in a little compartment there, and every now and
Speaker 3: again he pops out of a conversation with me and
Speaker 3: we have a conversation about the way the world is.
Speaker 3: He's gone through because he's older than me, he's going
Speaker 3: through all the eggs and pains that I will have
Speaker 3: to go through eventually, and so that's been interesting for
Speaker 3: me as I've aged, he's aged as well. Do I
Speaker 3: like him? I think I like him better than he
Speaker 3: would like me. I think he would find me pretty
Speaker 3: boring and wishy washy. He likes a challenge, and I
Speaker 3: don't think I would present him with any sort of
Speaker 3: a challenge. But the world has moved on and cops
Speaker 3: like Riebis don't exist anymore. There's no room for them
Speaker 3: in the modern world. Maybe there shouldn't have been room
Speaker 3: for them in the first instance, but I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: I mean, who knows what would have happened if I'd
Speaker 3: let him. You know, the first draft of the first novel,
Speaker 3: he died. He was shot and killed at the end
Speaker 3: of the first book, and for some reason I brought
Speaker 3: him back in the second draft. He survived. You know what,
Speaker 3: He's going to survive longer than me. You know, when
Speaker 3: I shuffle off this mortal coil, when there's nothing of
Speaker 3: me left in secondhand bookshops around the globe, there will
Speaker 3: charity shops. There will still be John Raebis.
Speaker 2: Ian Rangan's latest novel, Midnight and Blow, is available everywhere now.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for this to another special episode of
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