Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus

by Craig Cabell

  Rankin says that he sympathises with the character Siobhan Clarke more than Rebus, stating that he was closer in age to that character so therefore had more in common. I think there is more to it than that. What I see in Rankin – in his impressionable High School and university years – is a respect for the older, wiser man. As Conan Doyle looked up to his Sherlock Holmes, Rankin looked up to his Rebus. But Rebus was not one person as Dr Joseph Bell was the single prototype for Holmes. He was a pastiche, no, a puzzle – a rebus – made up, not of pictures of symbols, but of several English teachers and authors he knew in his formative years, perhaps those mentioned at the beginning of this book, who guided and shaped his literary talents. As Siobhan Clarke is tutored in her profession by Rebus, Rankin was tutored in his trade by his mentors.

  ‘“Justice never sleeps, Siobhan. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Anything I can get you before I go?”

  “A sense of having achieved something, maybe?”’

  In the above quote from A Question of Blood, Siobhan is in hospital, not Rebus, but although she has made sacrifices and ended up hurt, she still needs the reassurances of her mentor. So does Rankin need those reassurances too? Not in a physical sense, no. But he has adopted Edinburgh as his hometown nowadays and that comes with baggage: the statues, homes and myths of novelists past are the altar he preaches at. The history, mixed with the crime, intrigue and legend of Scotland’s capital city, is what thrills Rankin. He analyses the legends of Deacon Brodie, Burke and Hare – all true-life villains – and then wallows in the literary legends of yesteryear too. He will speak of Spark, Welsh, Stevenson, Scott, Hogg, Conan Doyle and Burns in his interviews, as he told me, ‘because I have a fascination for books. I was just fascinated by them, and writing.’72

  It’s all good stuff but if that is the final conclusion to this book, then I think we’re missing the magic. Let us dig a little deeper into the light of our findings.

  Rebus is an exploration into Rankin’s alternative careers. The author is simply exorcising the ghosts of his subconscious close escape. Too deep? Let’s rationalise: the young lad from Cardenden who felt different, didn’t want the natural career path of the Armed Forces or Police Force, so he became the first person in his family ever to go to university. Not only did he go there, he did well and worked hard on his fiction to make it his livelihood, and as his fame became greater, so did his desire to write about Rebus and exorcise any semblance of those beckoning careers. But then he begins to distance himself from Rebus, making him deliberately different from him.

  To take it further, Rebus is the older, dissatisfied Rankin from a parallel world, the man who didn’t escape.

  Rebus will only see a never-ceasing wave of crime extending beyond his retirement. He comes to realise by Exit Music that he wasn’t as important to the system as he initially felt. All those self-sacrifices to his personal life meant little. New Detective Inspectors are made and he is destined to go the way of all flesh once retired: as insignificant but as beautifully tragic as any other human being throughout history. Everybody has their flaws – even Bono – and everyone has to finally call it a day and let the young (and sometimes innovative) take over.

  Rebus has kept Rankin focused on what has gone right in his life. Unlike Rebus, Rankin is still married, close to his children, thankful for his success, and shares his stories and perceptions with fans and journalists alike, sometimes over a beer or coffee.

  ‘I suppose I’m a bit like Rebus,’ Rankin explained, ‘but not as street smart. However, I would have made a lousy cop – I get too involved in things, so the nature of the work would get to me.’73

  Rankin appears egoless, but he cherishes his status and home life, because those are the true ingredients that success is based upon. His constant analysis of Edinburgh is as cynical as Stevenson’s Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes. Like Stevenson, Rankin moved south to England and then overseas, but unlike Stevenson, Rankin returned. Perhaps he saw more worth in his home country than his predecessor, or perhaps it’s just a sign of the times – the restless spirit returns home.

  The growth of the welfare state has taken people out of the gutter but crime – grime – homelessness and violence are still endemic everywhere and Scotland is no exception. Rankin has almost seen it as his quest to break through the veneer of the picturesque tartan tin to expose this underbelly, which lives and breathes outside the small protective bubble of tourist Edinburgh. The Rebus series took the sting out of Trainspotting but not the cynicism.

  Many things are changing in Scotland and Rankin is at the forefront of the literary change inspired by the cultural changes. He has a right to be xenophobic, or at least be deeply wrapped up and proud of his adopted city, because he has an important job to do: to raise the literary profile of the country and by doing so, expose and tackle its many social issues.

  Scotland isn’t just a location for one’s holidays. It’s a place with good and bad history (like everywhere else), with people funny and sad, good and bad, and above all, hearts and souls with important things to say.

  Maybe, if the many branches of Waterstones in London had a section dedicated to Scottish literature, then part of Rankin’s inner quest would be fulfilled. I say this because he – quite rightly in my opinion – always searches to justify every aspect of Scottish literature, but it’s got to be modern literature, not just the classics. Trainspotting should sit next to Heart of Midlothian, The Wasp Factory with The Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with Knots and Crosses, All That Really Matters with Burns Poetry, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with The Hound of the Baskervilles. And so it goes on…

  Ian Rankin acknowledges the Scots’ denial of all things good or bad in their lives because his worldwide fame dictates that he must (any denial on Rankin’s part would be churlish to say the least). And that’s another important point: Rebus is the underbelly of Rankin, the cynic that keeps him so well balanced.

  ‘Rebus knew his own criteria came cheaply: his flat, books, music and clapped-out car. And he realised that he had reduced his life to a mere shell in recognition that he had completely failed at the important things: love, relationships, family life.’

  The Hanging Garden

  And it is the latter things in the above quote that Rankin has made a success of.

  So finally, what part of the 20 Rebus books do we conclude makes Ian Rankin John Rebus? None. He was just an exploration. An unplanned bit of this and bit of that. The answer is in the name: Rebus. A picture puzzle but still only a snap shot. Rebus drank a little too much and Rankin did himself for a while – no crime or revelation there. They both love rock music – namely The Rolling Stones – and perhaps just like their rock ‘n’ roll heroes, they can’t get no satisfaction.

  So what is my final conclusion? Simply that Rebus is a character we’ve all had a lot of fun with – including his creator – and has allowed us all to look at the real Edinburgh, the city that lies beneath the veneer. Rebus has been our tour guide on a Beatles-like magical mystery tour and, along with his creator Ian Rankin, we’ve all enjoyed the ride. But once Rankin knew he had fulfilled his dream of becoming an international bestselling writer, he moved away from identifying with Rebus, or giving him some of the same memories as his creator, and that was because Ian Rankin was a different man. He wasn’t the working class boy from Cardenden any more – he was the author from Edinburgh.

  ‘[The police station is] a damn sight quieter since you-know-who retired.’

  Doors Open

  ANNEX A

  THE BIRTH OF JOHN REBUS

  During March 2001 I interviewed Ian Rankin to promote his novel The Falls. During this interview he spoke very openly about his childhood ambition to become a writer and how he dismissed the Armed Forces and Police Force as a career, which was the usual career path for a lad from Cardenden. Rankin was certainly on form during this interview, as he explained to me how Rebus came out of this mix as his alter ego!

&
nbsp; Although I have covered the main points Rankin made to me during that interview in the text of this book, there is a validity in transcribing this segment of the interview tape so fans can hear it straight from the author himself. When I went back over the tape in my research for this book, I was pleased to find that the angle I had chosen had been, in a way, predicted by our interview seven years previous and, therefore, as an Annex, this interview reinforces the suppositions I have made and also lets Rankin have the last say on the matter.

  Slainte!

  The Rebus books are as much about Edinburgh as they are about Rebus – would you agree?

  ‘Absolutely. I went to Edinburgh aged 18 to go to university. I was born and brought up in a coal-mining town 30 miles north of Edinburgh. I went there as a student and I was living on the outskirts in this quite rough area, because Edinburgh is ringed by these places. But the centre of town isn’t allowed to change. Tourists go there and they see Greyfriars Bobby, the Scott Monument, the castle; then hear some bagpipe music, buy some shortbread and go home, right? And in the late ’70s, early ’80s, there was this other Edinburgh where some of the housing estates were so bad Oxfam were running aid convoys in. No joke. It had the worst Aids, HIV and heroin injection problem in Western Europe per capita. A huge problem. And nobody was writing about it, nobody was talking about it. The Edinburgh people were talking about was the Edinburgh of Miss Jean Brodie, and Jekyll and Hyde and Walter Scott, so I wanted to tackle the unseen Edinburgh.

  Where did the idea come from that Rebus should have been a veteran of the Armed Forces?

  ‘I have always been fascinated by the Armed Forces. My family for example: my two sisters married into the RAF. One husband was in the RAF from the age of 15 to 50 and served all over the globe and I used to get great holidays as a consequence. I went to places such as Cyprus and Malta, and I’d always been fascinated by it. When I was ten years old I wrote away for all the Army career information, and I got all the packs and career stuff back.

  ‘The area I lived in in Fife was quite rough, and when I left school a lot of the guys joined the Police Force or the Armed Forces, because they were the only opportunities open to them. Rosyth naval dockyard was nearby, so it did make sense. And in that way Rebus was a bit of an alter ego: he was a bit like me if I hadn’t gone to university, [the] things I might have done with myself if I hadn’t taken that leap – because I was the first person in my family to go to university. I might well have joined the police, or the Army or the RAF. Actually I wouldn’t have joined the RAF, I’m scared of heights!’

  But why did you go to university?

  ‘I had a fascination for books. I was just fascinated by them, and writing. From the age of four or five I was trying to write comic books, song lyrics later on for a band that didn’t exist, except inside my head. So I did English at uni because it meant I could just sit around and read books and get paid for it! I had a student grant to sit around all day and read the books I would have sat around and read anyway. So I was quite fixed from an early age really, as far as what I wanted to be. I had seen my sister and the life she had married into in the Armed Forces. She was a year or two here and a year or two there and they never owned their own home. It was always Armed Forces commissions and carpets and everybody on the camp had the same house. And I saw all of this as a kid and I thought, I don’t want that. I want stability. For the kind of writer I wanted to be, I wanted stability in my life.

  ‘They [my sister and her husband] have had a great life. They’ve travelled the world and now both of their sons have gone into the RAF, so both of my nephews have followed that path. And so, with Rebus, I wanted to give him an interesting background, and I wanted to make him older than me. I was 22 or 23; he was going to be in his forties. In the first book he is 40. And he’d been married and all that kind of stuff, and I just wanted to give him a past, and there came the Jekyll and Hyde thing. There was this Hyde character that was really close to him but who eventually grows to hate him and tries to kill him. And the book was very consciously based upon Jekyll and Hyde to that extent, so I thought if he’d been through the Army training and the SAS training – and I had been reading books about the SAS – then part of it was the psychological warfare, where they try to break you and that can be fairly traumatic. I thought that that would be a great way to have this guy crack up [the Hyde character] and so they went from being brothers-in-arms to having some great divide between them. Hyde believes that he was sold out by Rebus and comes to hate him.

  ‘So it all just clicked together like that and meant that he wasn’t just a dyed-in-the wool cop. He [Rebus] went through the SAS Parachute Regiment, cracked up under it, had a breakdown and decided to join the police – or was pushed into joining the police to keep him out of trouble – but he wasn’t part of the police machinery, so it was a nice way of making him an outsider as well, but making sure that he was fit enough and tough enough to take on the modern-day drug dealer and gangster.

  ‘I still have no idea what he looks like!’

  ANNEX B

  REBUS ON SCREEN

  Rebus was the title of the detective drama based on the Inspector Rebus novels and was produced by STV Productions (previously known as SMG Productions) for the ITV Network. The show lasted just shy of eight years, spread over four series, being cancelled in February 2008 after Ken Stott announced that he didn’t want to play the part any more.

  The first series starred John Hannah and was made for STV by his own production company, Clerkenwell Films. A new cast featuring Ken Stott as DI Rebus was introduced in the second series (which went into production in 2005 and was made in-house by STV).

  For me, and although each episode of the show was nicely made with quality actors, the storylines were pale counterparts to Rankin’s novels. Clearly you can’t put into a TV show the fine detail of a novel, but in the case of Rebus there was a distinct lack of depth to certain stories. In this Annex you will find the basic production history of the show preceded by a short observation regarding each episode, not necessarily a review of the action, which has little regard for Rankin’s original novels. All of this serves as a basic reference for anyone wanting to know more about the show.74

  The show is not without its critics, especially episodes such as Fleshmarket Close, The Hanging Garden and The Falls, where the stories seemed rushed and lacked any tension. The fact that two actors played Rebus in such a short time implies that the series’ makers never really found the right formula for the show. The fact that there is little description of Rebus in the novels gives the reader the freedom to picture the Inspector any way they wish, which probably means that whoever plays him on screen won’t come up to every fan’s individual expectation.

  Many fans of the books got confused or disillusioned by the series. Due to this lack of enthusiasm for the show, I open this Annex with a short interview with Rankin about his perception of the TV series.

  RANKIN ON REBUS

  What do you think of the TV series?

  ‘Well, they pulled my anti-terrorist story from the screen because of 9/11, which is strange because I thought that was one of the more old-fashioned stories in the series (Mortal Causes), in as much as things have changed so much in Northern Ireland. The situations have changed, the gangs have changed and the book was written and set in the 1990s, even though they changed it quite a bit for TV! I had a walk-on part in it and it was eventually shown in 2004.’

  What was your part?

  ‘I walked past John Hannah (Rebus) in the street! Of the first three stories of the original series, I watched the first one Black and Blue at the time and liked it, but I didn’t watch the other three.’

  Why was that?

  ‘I think I was worried that if I let the TV series get too much under my skin it would change the way I wrote the books.

  ‘Before the stuff went on TV I spoke to a few crime writers who had been on the box [TV] and the general consensus was to try and stay away from it. Keep away from th
e filming of it, don’t get too involved, because of necessity TV will change your characters to fit its own parameters. And they end up not being your characters.’

  But the books are radically different from the TV series?

  ‘A lot of the Rebus books take place inside Rebus’s head and I didn’t want to start hearing an actor’s voice and seeing an actor in front of me and that worried me a lot. John Hannah [the first screen Rebus] was so different from my idea of Rebus in terms of age; it wasn’t a big problem for me in that respect. My Rebus was 55 at the time of the first series and John Hannah was 39. So it was kind of watching a young Rebus, not the person I was writing about.’

  As long as you can still detach yourself from the series in that way, it is OK?

  ‘Yes, but some writers can’t. There was a terrible case where the writer of the Anna Lee mysteries – Liza Cody – found the screen character far too pretty. And because the actress was nothing like the character, Liza couldn’t write about her any more. She let her go and invented somebody else.’

  So on that basis you were always a bit shy of watching the Rebus shows?

  ‘Yes, just a wee bit. I certainly didn’t want anyone to change my ideas, and I always imagined a TV series as living in a parallel universe anyway. It’s another interpretation. Everyone has another interpretation of what Rebus was like, and the TV series was exactly that.’

  So it’s really the luck of the draw, as far as TV is concerned, if you’re going to get a good interpretation or a bad one?