Ian Rankin on Nicola Sturgeon, writing about the police after Sarah Everard and his new book The Rise
“Some people in my local pub have started asking ‘Where’s your horse? Where’s your suit of armour?’ – other than that, it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference.”
Sir Ian Rankin is talking about his recent knighthood, an accolade about which he seems equal parts proud and embarrassed.
“The only other Scottish author who’s got one is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So I thought, yeah, I fancy that. My mum and dad would have been chuffed to bits if they’d still been alive. My wife was more conflicted about it than I was.”
He’s speaking to me over Zoom, not from his adopted home of Edinburgh, where his Rebus novels are set, but his “bolthole” in Cromarty, north of Inverness. Now aged 63, he looks almost exactly the same as when he burst onto the literary scene nearly 40 years ago, more indie band frontman than international best seller, with his lived-in jumper and modish haircut, now flecked with grey.
I’m fascinated by what London is and what it seems to be turning into
Over that time he’s become one of the most successful and prolific writers of his generation with 24 Rebus novels to his name, making him the ninth highest earning British crime writer of all time (Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie and Jeffrey Archer make up the top three).
He’s promoting his latest novella, The Rise, which transports his whodunnit crime thriller from the streets of Edinburgh to high society London.
“I’m fascinated by what London is and what it seems to be turning into,” says Rankin in his east coast accent. “A lot of people who work in central London can’t afford to live there, so the centre is being hollowed out. I remember wandering past these big steel and glass structures where the lights are on but nobody’s home, huge buildings that have been put up for billionaires to tuck their money away safely, and the only people in them are the security.”
The Rise is set in a block overlooking Hyde Park, where those in residence include a Russian oligarch, a Saudi princess and the wife of a crime lord. It’s a great set-up for a whodunnit, as self-contained as a game of Cluedo, where the murderer might be the tech billionaire in the lobby with the priceless work of art.
It feels a long way from the mean streets and smoky pubs of Scotland where Rebus solved his crimes. But then crime has changed since Rankin started writing, becoming more international, more digital, more remote. Does this change the way he approaches a detective story?
“Crime writers have always looked at the kind of crimes that are being committed around them. Today a lot of that focuses on identity theft and people not being who they seem online, which plays into a general sense of paranoia around the internet. People worry that their phone or their home security is spying on them: we live in a world where anybody can be spying on you at any moment. We give away tonnes of information about ourselves online every day – a lot of recent crime fiction is starting to deal with those ideas.
Younger crime writers aren’t attracted to writing about police officers, because they don’t necessarily see them as good guys
“But we tend to come back to the same basic reasons people commit crime, the seven deadly sins type stuff: greed, anger, jealousy. The DNA of crime remains much the same. Today we have people dealing with asylum seekers, the rise of the far right in various quarters, racism poking its ugly head above the parapet again, sex workers and their rights. You’ve got a lot of angry people and crime fiction digs down into what makes them angry and what makes them commit crimes.”
In recent years there has been a marked shift in the way the people think about the police, and the wider institution of law enforcement. The murder of Sarah Everard, the killing of George Floyd, the seemingly endless string of Met officers being banged up for heinous crimes… Does this play on his mind when he’s writing?
“Yeah, definitely. If you look at the bestseller lists, there are fewer cops in there. It used to be PD James’s Adam Dalgliesh and Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford. Now you tend to get more standalone psychological thrillers. Younger crime writers aren’t attracted to writing about police officers, because they don’t necessarily see them as good guys. We have to take that on board. My last Rebus novel, A Heart Full of Headstones, is about a cop who’s a spousal abuser: he’s going to be prosecuted for it and he starts to tell tales about his fellow cops.”
Rankin caused a stir a few years ago when he said Rebus would have voted ‘no’ to Scottish independence, much to the chagrin of Nicola Sturgeon, who’s a big fan of the detective series. Since then there’s been plenty of political intrigue in his home country for a crime writer to tap into – I wonder what he makes of the scandals that have engulfed the SNP?
“It’s the old curse: ‘May you live in interesting times’. Politically, these have been very interesting times in Scotland, not very settled times. I don’t know if the SNP are unravelling or not. It could be a temporary blip. I don’t know whether there’ll be more changes to come, more twists and turns, or if the police will find anything from their various investigations into SNP finances. I thought the tent in Nicola Sturgeon’s garden was a bit OTT, that’s the sort of thing you’d expect when there’s bodies in the garden.
“As a writer trying to chronicle contemporary times it’s hard, though – if you write something today it could be completely overwritten by events. The only reference in my books to Brexit is two gangsters rubbing their hands together thinking there’s money to be made from chaos.”
I thought the tent in Nicola Sturgeon’s garden was a bit OTT, that’s the sort of thing you’d expect when there’s bodies in the garden
As Zoom threatens to end our interview, I squeeze in an admission: I find interviewing authors quite stressful, imagining they are quietly judging my unimaginative questions and missing the real story. What should I be asking?
“Not enough people ask me ‘what was the last LP you bought’ and ‘what was the last gig you went to’ – that kind of stuff. That’s what I would want to know.”
So what were they?
“The last album was Broken Records, an Edinburgh band who are terrific. And the last gig was Lloyd Cole in Edinburgh with two of his Commotions. Great songwriter, underrated. All crime writers are frustrated rock stars. Some of us tried it and failed miserably.”
Personally, I’m glad Rankin stuck to writing. And if you’ve somehow managed to avoid his work thus far, The Rise is an excellent jumping on point.
The Rise is out now on Amazon. Ian Rankin is speaking at the Southbank’s London Literature Festival tomorrow – for more information go to southbankcentre.co.uk