by Craig Cabell
Robert Louis Stevenson had the gift in a similar way and he showed it throughout his work, even his children’s stories, both Kidnapped and Treasure Island being prime examples. We will return to Stevenson later but for now Edinburgh, the city Ian Rankin has analysed through his Rebus novels. ‘I’m always trying to make sense of the place,’ he tells me. ‘And I try to do that through the books.’22 But has he managed to conclude his analysis? Not yet. In a way Edinburgh is the heart of Scotland – it is the capital city – but it doesn’t evoke the soul of Scotland, as Rankin is keen to point out: ‘You’ve got all these monuments… and visitors don’t see the real living, breathing city. People say, in order to get the perfect city in Scotland, you need to take all the Glaswegians, who are very Celtic, outgoing and talkative, and put them in Edinburgh, which is a beautiful city. 23 So perhaps Rankin has to write more about other areas of Scotland and uncover their perception of Edinburgh in order to get a more rounded perception of his beloved city?
This question reminds me of a line from one of Conan Doyle’s non-Sherlock Holmes titles, The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard: ‘The folk glanced at each other, and whispered to their neighbours.’ Surely this enforces the villagey type of mentality Rankin was alluding to earlier. In fact there is a very telling line in Rankin’s Strip Jack, where he explains that Brian Holmes (Rebus’s sidekick) lives in a village in Edinburgh, or a village absorbed by the ever-expanding Edinburgh. So in answer to the question: you need outside perception to make a clear and insightful prognosis of what’s going on inside Edinburgh.
So you need the insider and the outsider to pierce the underbelly of Edinburgh? Yes, you need to talk to someone who actually lives there, and somebody who doesn’t. And Rankin is both the outsider – from the Kingdom of Fife – and the insider – the man who has adopted Edinburgh as his home. And he can separate himself through Rebus, for he is the narrator, the man from Edinburgh, while Rebus is the outsider, the Fifer who took the normal career path of a lad from his hometown.
And did this analysis start at the very beginning of the Rebus series? Indeed it did. In fact the first two novels are two of the most important in the series as they got the ball rolling. Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek attempt to show the Jekyll and Hyde character of the city. But why is Edinburgh such a big influence on Rankin? He wasn’t brought up there – he was taken there once or twice as a child, but his memories of the place really come from his university days and the awakening of his literary dream which, as we have discovered, happened simultaneously. And there lies the rub. With the growth of his literary powers grew his need to research and study his adopted city and one fell hand in glove with the other. Too tidy an explanation? Perhaps it is, but Edinburgh became the catalyst for his academic studies, and maybe that ongoing analysis of the city will continue throughout his work until his very last novel, because if it isn’t present in the sub-text then the soul of Rankin’s novel has dissolved. Edinburgh, its people, its ‘villagey’ aspects, are what keeps Rankin writing and interested in his ongoing crime series (note the plural); not just Rebus but any other central character he chooses to create.
Rankin’s fascination encompasses the lives of locals who used to hide in the tunnels beneath the streets when the city was attacked in ancient times (Hide and Seek and Mortal Causes touch on subterranean Edinburgh), then there are the old boogie tales of Deacon Brodie, which harks back to the intrigue surrounding the writing of Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dark, true-life tales influence Rankin’s writing, such as the little dolls in their tiny coffins found in a cave on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh (The Falls). There he goes again, always driven towards the darkness – set in darkness – viewing the city from a dark hidden corner and passing comment, detached, fractured from the throng, an isolationist, sitting on Arthur’s Seat during an electrical storm, viewing the city as it’s exposed through every blast of lightning. Yet he is not cold and remote like an extreme Bowie creation, but attuned to peoples’ emotions, aware of their needs and longings, aware of the motivations of the Jekyll and Hyde characters who walk the streets of the city to this very day. An over-the-top summary? Of course it is, but there is something Pied Piper-like in Rankin: people follow him, believe what he says about Edinburgh, its past and its literature, and this is the mark of a good writer. A great writer? Only time will tell.
It is said that you can take the man out of the city but you can’t take the city out of the man. The only problem with that cliché is that it was written to explain the character of a person brought up in a city. Rankin wasn’t, he was brought up in the Kingdom of Fife; but Edinburgh did sink its claws into him at an impressionable age, an age when his literary talents and his powers of analysis were growing and, strangely, when asked to describe Edinburgh, Rankin would choose ‘villagey’, so he clearly feels comfortable there. And there lies the beginning of Rebus and Rankin’s fascination for Edinburgh. The city naturally followed his original hometown. ‘Edinburgh is my spiritual home. I see myself in a line of the city’s writers, in the tradition of Muriel Spark, Robert Louis Stevenson and others…’24 It is Spark and Stevenson, more than Burns, Scott and Conan Doyle, that Rankin continues to refer to. He does it in his books and interviews and indeed his PhD was about Spark and his first two Rebus novels were – by his own admission – his own versions of Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Yes, Edinburgh provided Rankin with a clear break from his past as well as the catalyst for fulfilling his dream career.
Rankin has said that after he died he ‘would like to be remembered as someone who tried to write truthfully about modern-day Scotland – and as someone who tried to be a good dad’.
I find it fascinating, but not surprising, that he would mention both things in the same breath, because along with his devoted wife, they are the things closest to his heart.
When I ask him what he loves about Scotland, he tells me, ‘I love the people, the sense of humour, the attitude of mind, the landscape.’ These are the wonderful things. Conversely, I asked him what he hated about his country and he replied, ‘I hate that we carry a chip on our shoulder, a long memory of perceived past grievances. Never mind “Auld Lang Syne” – it’s what’s ahead of us that counts.’25
This comment makes Rankin a very modern-thinking man. Yes, he cares about Scottish literature and its place in history, but also its place in current society. What can we learn from the Scottish writers of yesterday? How has Scottish writing changed over the centuries and, more importantly, what does modern Scottish literature say – what can we learn from it?
Rankin has been at the frontline of this exploration. It’s almost become a movement, especially during the Edinburgh Book Festival. Indeed his analysis of Scottish literature has made him world famous, simply because it was needed and I dare anyone to challenge that. Stevenson was an incredible personality, his books classics in a vast collection of genres; and then there is Conan Doyle’s character of Sherlock Holmes – in my opinion the greatest character in all literature.
Did Rankin want fame, though? In Artworks Scotland: When Ian Rankin Met Jack Vettriano, he answered this question. ‘I didn’t get into this [writing] to be famous… nobody teaches you how to deal with fame.’ Some could cast a cynical eye on this but I truly believe him. On the odd occasion when I’ve praised him to his face (for The Falls, Fleshmarket Close and The Naming of the Dead), he has physically cringed and stated – as he did in Artworks Scotland – ‘When people tell me I’m good I don’t really believe them.’ (However, I probably wasn’t that forthcoming about the odd book I didn’t like!)
Rankin is a modest man. A private man. A family man. And this harks back to his statement of wanting to be remembered as somebody who tried to be a good dad. I remember being present at his Fleshmarket Close book launch (Wednesday 22 September 2004) and, amidst the praise and pretence being showered upon him, he got very anxious when he thought a Star Wars box set he had bought his son had gone miss
ing. He was prepared to go straight out and buy another one and, to me, that is the mark of the man: his family is more important to him than all the publicity and fame journalists and publishers will pour upon him. Praise is ephemeral; the love of a good family isn’t.
Rankin has two sons, Jack and Kit. Kit is two years younger than Jack but is seriously disabled with Angelman Syndrome.26 Part of one of his chromosomes is missing. The consequence of this is that he’ll never speak, he can’t walk, he has seizures and is – despite being in his teens as I write – still in nappies.
Rankin’s top priority is being there for his children. For Kit that also means organising a trust fund, so somebody can look after him if anything happens to Rankin or his wife Miranda.
Again, I have witnessed the sincerity of this love first hand. While having a few drinks with Rankin and other friends and acquaintances in The Oxford Bar one evening, I remember Rankin glancing at his watch and almost jumping out of his skin because he had promised the babysitter he would be home at a certain time, and then leaving at the allotted time. This isn’t anything as bland as ‘being under the thumb’ – it’s being serious about one’s responsibilities, despite wealth and fame. Although this book is not a serious in-depth biography of Ian Rankin, I feel the above should be said (and he probably won’t thank me for it!) because it clearly shows what is important in his life and where everything else fits in context below it, i.e. the books and Edinburgh.
‘For my son Kit, with all my hopes, dreams and love’
Dedication to Set in Darkness
Perhaps the writer in Rankin is his Mr Hyde and the family man is his Dr Jekyll! Ever disturbed a writer while they are writing? If not, be warned: Mr Hyde will have a word with you. It’s an occupational hazard. Break a train of thought and aggravate the writer. American SF writer Robert A Heinlein once said several memorable things about writing: 1) that it was a good way to beat the system, 2) that it was a very lonely occupation and 3) never interrupt a writer while they’re at work, as they’ll bite your head off!
Why the last one? Because writing can be an easy escape. Like the young Rankin writing about the Fife he only dreamed of, it kept him optimistic and forward-looking and he needed to feel that. Stephen King has said that he has to tell himself stories and if he doesn’t, he gets grumpy, because his stories are an escape from the reality – the real-life horror – of life. Not convinced? Well, let’s continue with Stephen King for a moment. Once he wrote a story called Pet Sematary. He didn’t want it released. Why? Because it was too close to real life: teaching children about death and having a young child die in the book, it frightened King in a very real and genuine way, especially as he had a young family of his own at the time. To bring the exploration back to Rankin: it took him until The Black Book – the sixth Rebus novel (if you include the anthology A Good Hanging and other stories) to include a real Edinburgh police station and Edinburgh pubs. To begin with, Rankin hid behind total fiction; it was a complete fantasy world.27 The unreality is always important in fiction because it is the fiction of a story; the contradiction to this is that’s the very reason why this book exists – to find the reality of Rebus shrouded by the fiction.
Sometimes the reality of life can creep into a writer’s work. A good example of this was James Herbert’s The Dark, where a real-life court case focused him more on the novel he was writing. Herbert then used the anger he experienced at that time to drill deeper into the novel, making it one of his most dark and oppressive works. Ian Rankin has definitely written one book in anger – Black and Blue – and he has said that that state of mind made him ‘really focused. My trips into the “office” were an escape from harsh reality.’28 Although his motives were incredibly different to that of James Herbert (for it was when he first learned about Kit’s condition), the above does show that writers don’t shy away from real life and hide behind their stories; indeed the stories act as a kind of therapy, a funnel, allowing them to cope with – work through – the heartache of their lives.
So writers are impressionable. They are influenced by what is going on around them; their lives, the places where they live. Indeed, when Rankin lived in London for a short time, he set one of his Rebus novels there. But for the most part, Rankin has lived and worked in Edinburgh and that’s a very important place to both him and his creation John Rebus.
‘Then sore harass’d, and tir’d at last, with fortune’s vain delusion, O
I dropt my schemes, like idle dreams, and came to this conclusion, O
The past was bad, the future hid; it’s good or ill untied, O
But the present hour was in my pow’r…’
Robert Burns, My Father Was a Farmer
CHAPTER THREE
THE GERM OF AN IDEA
‘Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama was really performed.…’
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Story of a Lie
Now in the light of this information, let us move into Rankin’s university days and the novels he was writing at the time.
For approximately 15 years – up to the age of 30 – Rankin kept a personal diary of his day-to-day activities and, on 19 March 1985, while living in a bed-sit at 24 Arden Street in the Marchmont area of Edinburgh, he recorded the fact that he had had the germ of an idea for a third novel. He hadn’t written any of it yet but it was an idea that excited him. It was a crime novel.
Although he recorded the monumental moment on 19 March, the original ideas for the first Rebus book – written on an A4 piece of lined paper in blue ink – are clearly dated 15 March 1985. Also, towards the bottom of that page, which clearly lays out the basic plot of Knots and Crosses, is the historic note: ‘Hero – Rebus’.
And that is exactly where and when the character of John Rebus was born. Rankin was a post-graduate student at Edinburgh University. The lion’s share of his time was spent on his thesis of Muriel Spark and teaching some undergraduate classes; writing was just his hobby and he had been moderately successful as an amateur. Along with his previous competition successes (he had been a runner-up in a short story competition organised by The Scotsman newspaper and won a short story competition run by Radio Forth, which was based upon a relation’s naked afternoon stroll along the streets of Cardenden’s neighbouring mining town, Lochgelly!) he was also busy reviewing books for a local radio station.
This was all commendable stuff but there was more substance bubbling underneath the surface. I mentioned at the top of this chapter that Knots and Crosses was Rankin’s third novel; what about the first two?
To this day, Rankin’s first attempt at a novel (and I’m not including the 40 page effort from his formative years) remains unissued. Apparently a spoof black comedy, which he jokingly told me he would have to dust off someday and make fit for publication,29 the book is set in a Highland hotel and features a one-legged schizophrenic librarian, a young boy with special powers, and the abduction of a famous American novelist by the ‘provisional wing’ of the Scottish National Party. The book was called Summer Rites and still makes Rankin smile when talking about it today.
The book was rejected outright by publishers. One mentioned that the last third needed re-writing, something Rankin wasn’t prepared to do at the time. If this was due to his confidence in the story or the pressures of his studies is unclear, but suffice to say Rankin isn’t too sure where this first manuscript is now; there was only one copy and it was written in the days before he had a computer!
The impression he gives of this book is akin to a Tom Sharpe novel and perhaps as much as a departure from the style he has become famous for as his fourth novel Westwind (Barrie & Jenkins, 1990). Westwind was a British/American political thriller concerning a British astronaut called Mike Dreyfuss and the launching of a new communications satellite.30 It wasn’t until 1991 that Hide and Seek, the second Rebus novel, was published, some five years after the first novel and six years since the birth of the character. So of his first five published novels, only two featured Jo
hn Rebus. His third published novel Watchman featured the journalist Jim Stevens, who had appeared in Knots and Crosses, so it was this character that had the first ‘sequel’, not Rebus!
It is doubtful if Rankin ever considered a series about a journalist but what all this does prove is that Rebus wasn’t paramount in Rankin’s mind for quite some time. Rankin was keen to try other ideas and genres, starting with black comedy – Summer Rites.31
In March 1985 Rankin was still studying the novels of Muriel Spark but in the Introduction to the Collector’s Edition of Knots and Crosses (Orion, 2007) he admitted that his thesis ‘was proving less important to me than my own writing’. He had achieved his first success. This explains the reason why the creation of what would be Knots and Crosses got mentioned in his diary on 19 March, days after being conceived. The 19th was the biggest day in his modest literary life: he had had a novel accepted for publication by a small Edinburgh publisher, Polygon, and had gone along to the publishers to sign the contract! The novel was called The Flood and it was set in a decaying mining village – his own childhood village of Cardenden – ‘Carsden’ in the book. Rankin and his teenage friends had once nicknamed Cardenden Cardeadend and local people became upset with Rankin’s depiction of their community in his novel, which they considered to be as insulting as the teenage nickname.
The novel had started as a short story called The Falling Time32 but soon became longer, taking in a local childhood tale of a girl who fell into a canal against a backdrop of blue-collar Scotland. Still a world away from Rebus but based on the evidence of his earlier, albeit unreleased, work, The Flood made him a firm Scottish writer, using locations from his home country throughout.