Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus

by Craig Cabell

  ‘Her job had become merely that: a job. Maybe one day Rebus would feel the same way. But he hoped not.’

  Wolfman

  The above line sums up all of Rebus’s heartache. He always gets totally immersed in the seriousness of the cases he works on and, because of that, he loses every other aspect of his life: wife, child, less serious friendships, and becomes an alcohol-loving, junk-food-consuming, rock ‘n’ roll victim. Maybe that’s going a bit too far, but was it all worth it, particularly when we note that Rebus has ‘more ambition than ability’? Also Rebus has baggage from his brief army career; one can appreciate that drink kept many of those haunting demons at bay but he’s still a workaholic.

  ‘… a quarter to five, everyone in the outer office had already quit for the day, but Rebus hardly registered the fact. His mind was elsewhere.’

  Wolfman

  Rebus is an obsessive. He lets his job consume him. ‘Rebus wanted to burst out: I read your letters, Sammy… so many cases to solve, so many people depending on me.’ Rebus has a deep love of his daughter but he is pragmatic enough to know that he can’t live his life doting on somebody he hardly sees, somebody – a teenage girl – who is forging her own life. His chance of a happy married life with children is gone. Squandered. Rankin has admitted that he is an obsessive – look at how many novels, short stories and other writings (let alone talks, TV shows) he has completed over the past 20 years. He is certainly prolific. But unlike Rebus, Rankin doesn’t ignore his home life.

  Where did Rankin get his original idea for Wolfman? While living in London, he had developed insomnia. One night he stayed up and read Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs in one sitting. He thought he could write a popular serial-killer novel in the same vein. The result was hard, oblique and slightly left-field for Rebus.

  When we first meet John Rebus in the novel, he is having his rail ticket inspected for the third time since leaving Edinburgh. He doesn’t appear to like the Englishman he is travelling with and, when he disembarks at King’s Cross, he believes the air isn’t as clear as Edinburgh. Also, on buying an A-Z of London, he muses that the population of England’s capital city – ten million – outnumber the population of the whole of Scotland twice over. For Rebus, this wasn’t going to be an assignment to relish!

  Rebus is more disorganised and out of his depth than usual in Wolfman, but Chief Inspector Watson – aka the Farmer39 – had sent him to London to help investigate the Wolfman and he – Rebus – has to be on his best behaviour to do so.

  More easily said than done for Rebus. We learn early on how he deals with people on training courses, when they’re only trying to be nice. ‘Take your hand off my fucking back,’ Rebus snarls. ‘And don’t call me John.’ A book of discontent follows!

  Rebus arrives at the crime scene directly from the railway station, bags and all. He had overheard a conversation at King’s Cross about a new murder committed by the Wolfman and thought it best to get to grips with the case as soon as possible. The English police investigating the crime scene are a little wary of him to begin with, but perhaps impressed by his dedication of coming directly to the crime scene from the station. But Rebus’s thick accent and tweed suit mark him as an outsider and, frankly, that is the way he’s always been, even in Edinburgh. Wolfman just emphasises this through his brief spell in London.

  ‘He [Rebus] went through the SAS, that’s the Army parachute regiment, did the training, cracked up under it, nervous breakdown, eventually pushed into joining the police, but was never really part of the police machinery – so it was nice to make him an outsider as well [in London]. He was pretty fit, pretty tough.’

  Ian Rankin, interview with the author, 2001.

  Living in London had provided another new experience for Rankin: jury service. The author found himself on a case at the Old Bailey, where he learned a great deal about jury procedure and the security system of the famous court house, which he wrote down. This horrified a security guard, who tore up Rankin’s notes in front of him. Rankin thanked him, walked outside the building and wrote the whole lot down again while they were still fresh in his mind, and in full view of the now powerless security guard! (This was all good research material for Wolfman.)

  Wolfman was significant for Rankin because it was a book about another city written while living in that city. It gave him the confidence to write under different – less familiar – circumstances and must have added to his skills as a writer. Although he wouldn’t go on to write a book set in South West France (although southern France would influence an historic part of The Hanging Garden), Wolfman did set him on a prolific road of quality Rebus novels, which would see him turn from cult figure to international bestseller. Titles such as The Black Book, Mortal Causes, Let It Bleed, Black and Blue and The Hanging Garden were the much broader canvases that would evolve the series and make it internationally famous.

  It was as if Wolfman allowed Rebus to grow as a character – and maybe the stories grow too, taking them away from the claustrophobic epicentre of Edinburgh where Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek lived. Perhaps it’s more than that: maybe Wolfman allowed Rankin to take chances – to speculate more in areas he knew less about than his adopted, much loved city of Edinburgh, and this spread through a much wider set of topics in the future, such as the oil industry in Black and Blue. When I spoke to Rankin about this, he said: ‘I only wrote about London because I wanted to explore the city fictionally. Rebus seemed a good way to do that. Having done it, I didn’t feel the need to take Rebus so far from his comfort zone again.’

  Not only does Rankin explore London, he makes very perceptive comments about it too. The observation of ‘the top deck of a midday bus’ not being safe predicts 7/7 in a strange way; his comment regarding passengers on an underground train ignoring a beggar’s request for help is nothing less than an ‘astonishing performance’ in a ‘moral vacuum… that frightened Rebus…’ Rankin claims that people in Edinburgh keep themselves to themselves, but in London they can be downright rude.40

  Despite the coldness expressed towards the Scots, Rankin had some fun with Wolfman. First he gave Rebus a little motto to keep him from losing his temper too often: FYTP, which stood for Fuck You Too Pal (also used in the following novel Strip Jack). Childish it may be but get this: it worked, so don’t knock it!

  More importantly, because this was a semi-gory serial killer novel, the final ‘chase’ scene is one of the most amusing and entertaining moments in any Rebus novel. It works almost as a sigh of relief against the horror of the storyline. The judge is a great supporting character too.

  Rankin also had a bit of fun with his list of Acknowledgements at the back of the book. This was his idea of a joke, naming as many of his friends as possible, not necessarily people who had helped with technical knowledge that directly benefited the story. For example, Professor J [Jon] Curt. Curt was a fellow postgraduate student with whom Rankin spent a ‘boozy’ year when he was finishing his MA. He was also part-time barman at the Oxford Bar and Rankin credits him for putting him in touch with the place – so much so that he rewarded him by turning him into Rebus’s friend Dr Curt, the pathologist in the series.

  When Wolfman was due for US release, Rankin’s American publisher wanted to change the title. Wolfman was so obviously a horror title. Rankin explained that Wolfman was the name of the serial killer in the story but that didn’t cut too much ice. However, when his American publisher suggested the title Tooth and Nail, Rankin saw the merits. ‘The title seemed resonant, and chimed with my first two Rebus novels,’ he would write in the special introduction to the book’s 2007 re-issue.

  A couple of months after the release of Wolfman, Rankin received a photo from friends in Tottenham showing the gloomy real-life subway where the first murder in the novel takes place. On the white tiled wall, somebody had written ‘Wolfman’ in six-foot letters. Rankin has kept the photograph, probably to remind him that when fiction provokes real-life imagery, strange people turn elements of
that fiction into indelible fact.

  ‘The Wolfman had taken a risk this time, however, striking in late evening instead of at the dead of night. Someone might have seen him. The need for a rapid escape might have led him to leave a clue. Please, God, let him have left a clue.’

  Tooth and Nail

  It seems that at the time of writing Tooth and Nail Rankin was content to make Rebus a series. He had enjoyed writing about the character, and people wanted to know what this maverick would get up to next.

  Although there were parallels between character and creator, Rankin would state that Rebus was like the older brother he never had – although Rebus never gave him advice like an older brother would! When one learns that Rankin actually had a brother who died before he was born, one could immediately interpret the Fifer Rebus in elder brother mode, but Rankin remains unconvinced on this point.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STRIP JACK NAKED

  ‘He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.’

  George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

  Rankin was enjoying himself and everything was going well, but with the Rebus series destined to continue, he believed that any non-Rebus novel should come out under a pseudonym, because his audience would be disappointed if Rebus didn’t appear in it. This was no idle threat. Rankin did write three thrillers under the name Jack Harvey (his son’s first name and his wife’s maiden name) and those would be published by Headline. In fact, the pseudonym was so obscure in comparison to Rankin’s mainstream work that when I called Hodder/Headline for details concerning sales figures for these ‘Ian Rankin’ books, the publisher swore blind that they had never worked with the author.41

  ‘The fan had been installed and turned on, and an hour or so later Doctor Curt provided the shit to toss at it.’

  Strip Jack

  Although Rankin has always considered his Rebus books to be ‘whodunits’or ‘crime novels’he has always said that they are also very funny books and that they made him laugh. Although there are macabre incidents in the books, there is always an opportunity for humour, if not in the narrator’s banter (see above quote) then within the story itself and brought about by the characters themselves.

  Part of the reality of the Police Force – or even the Armed Forces – is that extreme circumstances need a release valve. There will be natural banter between good friends – and not so good friends! – and no one, with the possible exception of superior officers, can be serious all the time. Indeed, the irrepressible Dr Curt is a zany as the manic Professor Professor from the children’s cartoon The Secret Show: he’s always finding his own jokes funny while others fail to see the humour, and he always delivers an important fact.

  ‘Rebus didn’t mind being the butt. He knew the way it was. In a murder inquiry, you worked as a team. Lauderdale, as team manager, had the job of boosting morale, keeping things lively. Rebus wasn’t part of the team, not exactly, so he was open to the occasional low tackle with studs showing.’

  Mortal Causes

  A lot of the humour in the Rebus series comes at the good inspector’s expense. His inability to have a proper date with a woman without things going pear-shaped (i.e. he is late, has been involved in a skirmish, decided to keep whatever peace offering he has bought to make up for the last disaster), adds a distinct injection of black humour to proceedings. Also, Rankin has a private joke with the real Police Force, because when it is time for Rebus to buckle down and do things in a methodical manner – i.e. follow police procedure to the letter – Rankin ignores the whole thing and says, ‘Rebus wouldn’t do it that way, he’s a maverick.’ Therefore he cuts out all the tedious procedure and red tape that would give stark, boring realism to the stories, and consequently have his own private chuckle with any reader who knows the slightest thing about police procedure.

  The people who appreciated Rankin’s dark humour from the off were his new publishers Orion. In the summer of 1992 they released a numbered, limited edition proof of his first Rebus novel for them – Strip Jack. High up on the back of the paperback they wrote: ‘Memo to Chief Inspector Morse and Wexford. You have a new rival from north of the border. His name is Rebus, his manor Edinburgh. And he’s found a writer as good as yours. Watch him.’

  Tongue-in-cheek banter it may have been but it did send a message out to the reviewers who were keen to tar Rebus with the same brush as his rivals. Orion got the mind-set right for Rankin/Rebus early on and that probably explains why the relationship has been a strong one over the past two decades. Rankin echoes this: ‘Orion was a brand new publishing house. The attitude was very gung-ho and there were lots of good new ideas being tossed around. To prise me away from Random Century they had doubled my advance (to 10k I think, but that may have been for two books). I’d already moved from Polygon to Bodley Head to Barrie & Jenkins to Century… If I didn’t start selling, I knew I’d be on borrowed time! Of course, I’m still with Orion, so obviously we work well together – but that’s the best outcome for a writer. There are people around me 42 who’ve become friends and confidants.

  Strip Jack wasn’t to be Rankin’s breakthrough novel, however. In fact, it is one of the rarest Rebus titles in first edition hardback. The book sold moderately well but mainly through trade paperback. It is a fact that sales concerned Rankin at the time, as he clarified to me: ‘It was my first book for Orion, and I wanted to do well for my new employers! I was living in France and had become the family’s only breadwinner. Our son Jack had come along, so I had to earn a living. I couldn’t piss about. I was a worried man when I wrote Strip Jack.’

  The title of the book came from the card game Strip Jack Naked (to keep within the game-playing theme of the first two book titles in the series), but Rankin decided that the title Strip Jack was more punchy. The title didn’t come about because of the birth of his first son, Jack, although he became the subject of the dedication; his name had already been decided and the whole thing was a coincidence.

  ‘“You’re sure it was a hire car?” Watson asked

  Holmes. Holmes thought again before nodding.’

  Strip Jack

  Of course the homage to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson is there if you want it, and the irony is that Watson is the boss and Holmes is the subordinate. Rankin is playing with great Scottish literature again but he can’t help it. The statue of Sherlock Holmes stood for many years around the corner from Princes Street (until they started putting the tram lines down in 2009) and Rankin would acknowledge Doyle every time Holmes and Watson – his Holmes and Watson – took centre stage in his novels.

  Strip Jack was released in October 1992. It is a political novel about a local MP called Gregor Jack and it appears somebody wants to Strip Jack Naked – set him up, bring him down – which is why he is found in bed with a prostitute during a police raid at the start of the book. Rebus feels sorry for the man until Jack’s wife is found murdered and the novel takes a more sinister turn.

  The constituency of North and South Esk (a fictional setting in the novel) has parallels to North and South Edinburgh but there is more to it than that. The book is about boundaries, territorial/political, and personal ones too. It hits out at both Conservative and Labour parties and makes observations on the changing face of Scotland.

  Strip Jack was the fourth Rebus novel – released after the first anthology of short stories (A Good Hanging and other stories, Century, 1992) – and it is clear that Rebus had fully developed in Rankin’s mind. He lived and breathed, made his own decisions and pushed his creator on to greater heights. But it wasn’t a dark novel, as Rankin admits in his Introduction to the anthology Rebus: St Leonard’s Years (Orion, 2001): ‘I think the … novel is one of the lighter additions to the series.’

  With a son, and the beautiful French countryside all around him, he must have felt more relaxed, despite the pressure of writing a quality book for his new publisher because, for me, that’s the reason why the story is lighter, perhaps
more laid-back.

  The story is less dynamic than the previous three novels in the series. It is a straightforward whodunit but it doesn’t go anywhere until Liz Jack is murdered halfway through. The only saving grace is dear Mrs Wilkie, the OAP owner of a remote guesthouse who is practically senile and provides a few laughs at Rebus’s expense.

  Perhaps the most important aspect of Strip Jack is Rebus’s sudden love of rock music, which coincidentally is matched by Gregor Jack: The Rolling Stones, and specifically their album Let It Bleed (the album title will become a future Rebus book title). Suddenly Rebus’s musical taste matched that of his vinyl-junkie creator.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE PLOTS THICKEN

  ‘When Great London Road police station had burnt down, Rebus had been moved to St Leonard’s, which was Central District’s divisional HQ.’

  The Black Book

  The Black Book was the first novel set at St Leonard’s police station and the first to feature Siobhan Clarke (Rebus’s soon-to-be sidekick). It also brought back Nell Stapleton from Hide & Seek and the blind man Vanderhyde from Knots and Crosses (note the ‘hyde’). Also it’s the first outing for Sword and Shield, a hardline offshoot of the Scottish National Party that returns in Mortal Causes (the following novel) in a bigger way.

  The Black Book was where Rankin really developed the working world of John Rebus, as he told me: ‘I know that I’d been reading Confessions of a Justified Sinner in which a young man gets too close to the Devil for comfort and eventually is persuaded to kill. That’s basically the plot of The Black Book, isn’t it?’

  Well, not quite! The book opens with the black humour we now expect with a Rebus novel. Straight away Rebus loses a lover, finds a useless brother and witnesses ‘the black comedy of life in a blood-soaked Edinburgh butcher’s shop’.43 All of this is dismissed by Rebus as ‘just one of those weeks’ but things get steadily more complicated and exciting. Enter ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty. ‘I’d been reading Larry Block’s Matt Scudder books,’ Rankin told me. ‘And Scudder becomes friends with a really nasty gangster.’ So Rebus needed his contact with the underworld, his nemesis, his Professor Moriarty? ‘Let’s call “Big Ger” an “homage” to44 Block’s novels.