IAN RANKIN

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Sept 2008

Background

Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into twenty-two languages and are bestsellers on several continents.

Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America's celebrated Edgar Award for 'Resurrection Men'. He has also been shortlisted for the Edgar and Anthony Awards in the USA, and won Denmark's Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the Deutscher Krimipreis.

Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews and Edinburgh. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons

Riverside Studios will celebrate it’s 10th anniversary with a festival of wild new work, including the performance of a piece based on an Ian Rankin libretto, performed by the Scottish Opera on the 16th & 17th August . For more information go to www.riversidestudios.co.uk

Oblivious to the mere existence of such a thing as the mystery genre - Rankin says - he was stunned to hear his book described first and foremost as a crime novel. But eventually this characterization prompted him to have a closer look at the work of other mystery writers, and he found that the form suited his purposes just fine; that in fact he "could say everything [he] wanted to say about the world, and still give readers a pacy, gripping narrative." 

John Rebus seemed to spring fully formed from young English literature graduate Ian Rankin. The book’s title Knots & Crosses came first, with the protagonist’s name coming out of that ‘picture puzzle’ of knotted rope and matchstick crosses of the title. Oxford had ‘Morse’ – a code, so Edinburgh would have ‘Rebus’ – a puzzle. 

Why Rebus ...?
I was a student of English Literature when I wrote the first Rebus book, KNOTS AND CROSSES, and I was studying deconstruction, semiotics, etc. A rebus is a picture puzzle, and it seemed to click. After all, we already had Inspector Morse (a type of code), and in the first book Rebus was being sent picture puzzles to solve... so I made him Rebus, thinking it was only for one book (I never intended turning him into a series) so it didn't matter if I gave him a strange name. Recently, I bumped into a guy called Rebus in my local pub. He lives in Rankin Drive in Edinburgh. Truth is always stranger than fiction...

Influences: “My hometown’s library opened another world to me, letting me access ‘adult’ books such as The Godfather and Shaft. As I entered my teens, I started writing poems, song lyrics and short stories I was using my pocket money to buy books by Frederick Forsyth and Alistair MacLean (himself Scottish and a Gaelic speaker, though I didn’t know it then). Ian McEwan appealed to me particularly because he seemed to find erotic potential in the most mundane settings – something bound to appeal to a teenager living in a fairly unexciting town.’

Ian’s writing is greatly influenced by the stories of Robert Louis Stevenson and James Hogg. Hogg’s Gothic masterpiece The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, first published in 1824, examines the duality of good and evil, and is cited as an inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Ian used the Jekyll and Hyde story as a template for his Rebus novels, with the city of Edinburgh itself being as much of a character as John Rebus.

‘I owe a great debt to Robert Louis Stevenson and to the city of his birth. In a way they both changed my life. Without Edinburgh’s split nature Stevenson might never have dreamt up Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and without Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I might never have come up with my own alter ego Detective Inspector John Rebus.’
(Ian Rankin, quoted in The Evening News)