Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 motiveswere 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 goingon 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
    N ow 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, on19 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 linedpaper 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 andteaching 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’sneighbouring 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 effortfrom 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. Thebook 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