Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus Read Online Free PDF

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 hadbought his son had gone missing. 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 withAngelman 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 ‘beingunder 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, withall 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 thingsabout 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 hassaid 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 childdie 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 focusedhim more on the novel he was writing. Herbert then used the anger he experienced at