Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus

by Craig Cabell

  When The Flood was re-issued by Orion in 2005, it benefited from a thorough re-proofing from Jon Wood (Rankin’s editor at Orion), and allowed his legions of fans to read a book previously worth up to £1,000 in hardback on the collector’s market. There were 400 copies of the original hardback printed simultaneously with 600 paperback copies. The book jacket – along with the editorial – was completed by students, making a modest first outing for Rankin but one that has endured and today ranks as one of his most interesting diversions from the Rebus series.33 Some people, myself among them, consider The Flood to be a female-interest book. If it is because of the female lead character or the big emotions displayed throughout the story, is unclear, but that’s the nature of The Flood: it is difficult to define. Rankin calls it ‘a young man’s book’, meaning that only a young man could write it. He’s right in the respect that it’s a book based upon youthful memories – stories heard, locations from one’s childhood town – and that makes it both different and endearing.

  The Flood is not a crime novel. It sits on that broad shelf of General Fiction that is never defined and encapsulates those almost genreless tomes that beg for mainstream attention. It is an underrated work written before genre became important to the bestselling-writer-to-be, so it is . completely uncommercial in that respect. In fact, for story alone, it is a book I rate more highly than Rebus tomes such as Wolfman and Strip Jack, so it is definitely among his best efforts in regard to his early work.

  On 22 March 1985, still buzzing from the success of placing The Flood, Rankin decided to start work on his first Rebus novel. He was living in a bedsit in Marchmont. He had a gas fire and an electric typewriter. Two days later he had given his story a working title: Knots and Crosses. He stared out of the window at a tenement opposite and decided that Rebus would live there.

  The book opens with Rebus placing flowers on his father’s grave on the fifth anniversary of his death (28 April – Rankin’s own birthday!). He then battles through miserable weather to visit his brother who, although polite, really doesn’t want to see him. Rebus’s brother Michael has made a success of his life as a stage magician – like their father had been – and Rebus feels a million miles away from the bullshit and pretence of his brother’s life. He returns to his job where he investigates a child-killer. Rebus starts receiving small knots and crosses in the post from the killer. It becomes clear that the killer is someone he knows and the story builds from there.

  The impression Rankin wanted to give the reader at the time – now lost on any reader of the Rebus series – is that Rebus himself is a suspect in the story. He makes the character’s life complicated; something he may have grown to regret as the series progressed.

  Rebus wasn’t behind the murder case but he did find out who was: someone who wanted revenge for a past misdemeanour. The killer had already killed the son of Rebus’s superior, something he wouldn’t be forgiven for, and now the killer is after Rebus’s young daughter, Samantha.

  Rankin had originally intended to kill off Rebus at the end of the book. It’s an unthinkable thing to contemplate today; but all this goes to prove how disposable the character was to his creator in the beginning.

  That said, Rankin found that Rebus leapt off the page while writing Knots and Crosses and the first draft of the book was reputedly completed in six weeks. Barrie & Jenkins took the novel after a second draft (completed in October 1985) and a slight cut was suggested by his new-found agent; something that was well advised, as I will discuss presently.

  So Rankin’s first Rebus novel was complete. Rankin had acquired a good agent and a reasonably large publisher. His career as an author was building well.

  ‘Knots and Crosses is a story of savagery and guile played out in one of the most genteel cities in the world. But it is more; an intellectual puzzle, a game, a captivating and accomplished thriller with a chilling climax.’

  Segment of the original jacket blurb to the first

  edition of Knots and Crosses

  Most early novels are written during a person’s free time, when the time available for research is minimal. For Knots and Crosses there were two potential roads for research, both of which were important in regard to the ongoing series. The first was police procedure. Rankin wrote to the Chief Constable and was advised to talk to Leith police station. He spoke to two detectives who were apparently very wary of Rankin and his odd questions about child abduction cases – a real-life one being investigated at the time! ‘In my duffel coat and Doc Marten boots, a Dr Who scarf wrapped around me, I probably wasn’t their idea of a novelist,’ he said in the Introduction to the Collector’s Edition of Knots and Crosses. In fact this was an understatement, as Rankin was cross-examined by the policemen and the experience kept him away from police stations for at least the next year!

  The second area of research was the SAS and, this is a very interesting part of the book to analyse, because this is the area where Rankin’s agent suggested some cuts.

  To begin with, Rankin credits Tony Geraghty’s ‘excellent book’ Who Dares Wins (Fontana, 1983) for his research regarding the Special Air Service (SAS). As during his childhood, Rankin went to a book of a famous movie, although this time he was old enough to go and see it!

  The first thing that strikes me about the cut 20-odd pages of Knots and Crosses (Rebus’s time in the SAS) is that it’s a watered down version of serious special ops training. There is a distinct lack of colourful language, a minimum of ‘F’ words and no ‘C’ words, just the odd ‘bastard’ and ‘fuck’, so the end result is both palatable and acceptable to the general reader.

  In any area of the British Army (and its offshoots) there are always the amusing nicknames, such as ‘Wiggy’ for a bald man, ‘Scotty’ for a Scot’ and so on. Not only is there a lack of this basic camaraderie in Knot and Crosses, there is also the distinct lack of ‘creative’ swear words, which make female Company Clerks gasp and ORs snigger. So we are moving away from reality towards the palatable/unbelievable in this cut text? Yes, unfortunately we are.

  I also suggest that Rankin used a little bit more than Geraghty’s book in research, but the second-hand nature of the SAS sequence shows through. This harks back to the lack of time for quality research. With best intentions at heart, most young writers are not convinced that their early efforts at a novel are going to be published and, as a consequence, the resulting research is either half-hearted or, at best, compromised by the learning curve of the author coming to terms with his trade and the time available to undertake quality research.

  Like the early work of James Herbert, Rankin’s early Rebus novels are a little cut-and-thrust. They’re direct, visual and slightly brutal (see Wolfman for a good example) but when Rankin had the opportunity to be over-the-top (with his SAS sequence), he failed to do so.

  My personal grumblings concerning the reality of the sequence were probably not what concerned his agent at the time! More likely, the cut was proposed because it interfered with the novel’s pace. The cut piece provides – for me – an unconvincing interlude that may have entertained the author at the time – and the die-hard Rebus fan in the 20th Anniversary edition – but did nothing for the original novel and the way the story has been enjoyed ever since.

  Now I’ve completely slated the cut sequence, what does it tell us about Rebus?

  A gripe I’ve always had with Rebus is the visual representation of him. I’ve always found it hard to visualise him in the Police Force but strangely, not so difficult as a member of the SAS. He comes across as a hard-nosed Fifer –164lbs with no ‘excess luggage’ – a young man smart enough to understand when his mettle is being tested by his superiors/trainers, and somebody who would be cheeky enough to ask his ‘boss’ if he would carry his pack and jacket, as it was too heavy! This pushing of the system is perfect grounding for the police-inspector-to-be. His wry sense of humour, his been-there-seen-it-done-it attitude, gives him the perfect grounding for squaring up against gangster ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty
in future novels.

  Does all this imply that Rankin has let the visual image of Rebus slip over the years? No. Simply, he’s refused to repeat himself and has let the character build and become more complex with each book through his cases, situations and general behaviour. Rankin has let Rebus speak and act for himself and as a consequence, avid readers of the series have drawn a very intricate and personal picture of the man over the years through his interactions – the ups and downs of his many relationships.

  This approach has two consequences: 1) not everyone would be totally happy with any interpretation of Rebus on screen and 2) readers who take the books out of sequence find it difficult to draw their own visual interpretation of the character.

  Rebus is not as clearly defined as Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, but the stories are as intricate and the locations are definitely more vivid. Like fellow Scot Iain Banks, Rankin shows a clear interest in plot and location and an almost disregard to characters in comparison. In the thriller genre Frederick Forsyth is guilty of a similar thing and both Banks and Forsyth have not fiercely denied such criticism in the past.34 Indeed, Rankin says that he finds out new and interesting things about Edinburgh with each Rebus novel, so at the very least, the location is as important to him as the main characters – or one is defined by the other. And here lies a very interesting point: is a person defined by the area where they live? To a degree they have to be, but there are exceptions; such as Rankin and Cardenden, and Rebus and Cardenden. They are two very different adults (sic).

  Returning to the cut sequence about Rebus in the SAS, I agree with the agent’s call to cut it, albeit for different reasons. The cut sequence was a great exercise in Rankin getting to know Rebus, but little more.35 Or maybe one thing more: it vindicates Rankin’s claim that Rebus jumped off the page while writing the novel, so much so that his self-indulgence was edited out of the final version.

  The one thing I do take from the cut segment is the extension of the first-person voice. There’s something very striking about Rebus narrating the story. An intriguing glimpse into his mind: ‘He could have put me out of action in about ten seconds dead, literally. I wanted to be like him.’

  This, where Rebus reflects on the trained killer that is his SAS boss, clearly shows a different side to the character we know by novel 17 – not a laid-back cynic but a man who was a born fighter and battled hard to get where he did in the Armed Forces and then the Police Force. OK, perhaps being a loose cannon compromised his career somewhat, but Rebus had his own moral code: he was true to himself. His principles were almost right for the Police Force and being a bit left of centre was acceptable in order to get the job done. And there is Inspector Rebus, a man at the outset nothing like his creator.

  My parting thought regarding the self-narrative part of Knots and Crosses: now that Rankin has whetted our appetite for a first person story in the Rebus series, why doesn’t he write a large tome in the first person? Rebus in retirement, maybe an autobiography (sic), surely that would expose more of the inner man, not unlike Jackie Leven’s song The Haunting of John Rebus, perhaps with the same melancholy overtones. Isn’t it time Rebus opened up and faced his demons? Surely alone in retirement the voyeur loses his protective clothing: the job that kept him so busy he didn’t have to look at himself.

  Knots and Crosses was a thrilling first outing for Rebus, stark, real and a good, entertaining read. Rankin admits that Rebus is a little too well-read in the story, thinking more ‘like the student/novelist who created him’ and listening to jazz rather than rock music. Yes, Rebus was a little stuffy to begin with, but every good copper has his pretences.

  I find it hard to criticise Knots and Crosses in its first edition, because it doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is: a good cop novel. It seems to achieve many things by default.

  And what does Rankin think of it? When I talked to him about the book (on two or three occasions in interview), he always highlighted the fact that the reader missed the connection between the novel and Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde – something he tried to rectify with the next novel in the series Hide and Seek.

  Rankin probably had a higher opinion of the general reader than he should have given them credit for (especially in England). Knots and Crosses intentionally looks at the split personality of Edinburgh, from the tourist areas to the more scary backwaters that visitors rarely see. Rankin took the character of Deacon Brodie – one of Stevenson’s influences when writing Jekyll and Hyde – cabinet maker by day, gentleman thief by night – but people didn’t reach that far into the book to detect that particular strain of schizophrenia. Indeed it would be something he would have to make more obvious with the next Rebus novel and he did.

  Rankin dedicated Knots and Crosses ‘To Miranda without whom nothing is worth finishing’. Rankin married his student girlfriend in 1986 and they went off to live in London for four years where he worked at the National Folktale Centre. This became the interim period for him. The books weren’t bestsellers at this time, Rankin writing in his diary that when Watchman was released the world was unmoved. It would take several more years and several more Rebus novels for him to give up the day job (approximately the eighth book, Black and Blue).

  After London, the family moved to rural France for six years, living in an old farm house. But his adopted city called from afar and the Rankins moved back to Edinburgh, where they live to this day. Like Stevenson, Rankin moved around a lot, but unlike Stevenson he eventually moved back home, home being Edinburgh – his adopted home for ever more. That’s an important point to understand: Rankin’s heart lies in his home country, not a far off island.

  ‘Their destination was the Old Town, for Miss Brodie had said they should see where history had been lived…’

  Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

  CHAPTER FOUR

  REBUS, IN THE BEGINNING

  ‘Edinburgh slept on, as it had slept for hundreds of years. There were ghosts in the cobbled alleys and on the twisting stairways of the Old Town tenements, but they were Enlightenment ghosts, articulate and deferential.’

  Knots and Crosses

  After Knots and Crosses was released (by The Bodley Head), Rankin looked to Scottish novelist Allan Massie for some reassurance. He did this because he believed that he should have written an academic work not a piece of crime fiction. Yes, he still felt guilty for writing commercial work. Massie was quick to guide his charge: ‘Who would want to be a dry academic writer when they could be John Buchan?’ Again the sober words of the older, academic figure were great reassurance to Rankin. Perhaps nowadays Rankin is settling down to be the wise old figure of academia himself. His TV shows lend themselves to the persona of the serious thinking man rather than the laid-back crime novelist, and his participation in magazine programmes such as BBC2’s Newsnight Review enforce this. That said, the man you can meet occasionally in the Oxford Bar, in the backstreets of Edinburgh’s New Town, is one of the most convivial of companions you’d chance to meet, so maybe he has a long way to go before the cobwebs start to cling!

  Writing crime fiction did concern Rankin in the early days. Not unlike the horror genre, the crime genre has a pulp quality that is hard to shrug off. Even the two-billion-selling Agatha Christie is open to criticism. So prolific, Christie laid herself open to the criticism of ‘formula’ writing with her aristocratic whodunits. However, Rankin would happily concede that Christie didn’t write his kind of crime fiction at all, stating clearly that there was no time for the reader to form a bond with her murder victims before they got killed off! A point well made, but Rankin has killed people off pretty quickly himself, completely absorbing himself in the criminal investigation itself – or rather Rebus doing so – as much as either Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple before him.

  The key thing here is that Poirot and Marple were not police officers. They had their own individual – methodical – way of doing things but they rarely had people to answer to, and the constraints of police proced
ure that Rebus has to adhere to is an important factor in giving credibility to the Rebus series. That said, if Rankin found Rebus too bogged down in red tape he immediately made him ignore the rule book!

  Rankin did make his job more difficult by making Rebus a complex character, but in a strange way that made him more endearing and a little less like his creator. Perhaps the complexity of the character has resulted in some continuity errors in certain books but even Dickens did that and as Rankin has had some of his earlier work – such as The Flood and Watchman – re-edited and re-issued them with special Introductions, he can probably now do the same with the whole of the Rebus series, tweaking them for posterity.36

  What Rankin – and possibly his publisher – fails to fully appreciate at the moment, is the importance of the Rebus series to both crime fiction and Scottish literature. As a collection, it has been released during a major technological evolution within the Police Force – which is interesting from a cultural point of view – with the advance of computer systems, databases, the Internet, the introduction of the mobile phone and complex DNA testing. The early Rebus novels showcase the primitive Police Force of the mid-1980s, while the latter books highlight the technological advances made since then. The books will stand as a social comment written in real time during this exciting 20-year period. Does that imply that returning to the Rebus series in the future could be a mistake? Yes, or at least, water down the impact. He could quite happily make an appearance in any other Rankin novel but not as the central character.

  Although this book is all about an author and his creation, it must be noted that it is the interest in police procedure and the underbelly of Edinburgh that has brought us to this point. Throughout the 1990s and into the Millennium, the general public both north and south of the border have been fascinated by emergency services series, both fact and fiction. The grim reality of life is good entertainment if it doesn’t concern you personally and what is refreshing is the overall message that these TV shows convey: a positive attitude towards the hard work, dedication and professionalism of the emergency services. Frederick Forsyth has said that since Dixon of Dock Green the British people ‘have empathised with the Police Force and that has endured through programmes such as The Bill and into crime-stopper programmes such as Crimewatch.’37