Master of mystery
Jayanthi LIYANAGE
Ian Rankin is contemporary Edinburgh’s answer to Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle. His well-loved Inspector Rebus series ended sometime ago, but the
prizes keep rolling in. No sooner than touching Scottish home soil, he
has to fly to Barcelona for Pepe Carvalho prize, a lifetime achievement
award named after a renowned character in Spanish crime fiction.
Rankin voices his appreciation to the British Council for giving the
opportunity to come to Colombo and says hopefully, “I had a
spectacularly good time at Galle Literary Festival that my wife and I
would like to come back as tourists.”
Rankin’s books have been translated into 34 languages and he is in
the Guinness Book of World Records for the entry of seven titles on the
Scottish Top Ten Best Seller’s List at the same time while J.K. Rowlings
had only three. Here Rankin answers the burning questions of his fans.
Q: What are your impressions of Galle Literary Festival?
A: It was a terrific festival. A good chance for me to meet writers
from all over Sri Lanka and get a sense of the stories and poems they
were writing. In Galle Fort, there were free demonstrations of drumming,
music and Sri Lankan dance. In a short space of time, I was able to
enjoy many aspects of Sri Lankan culture and also eat very good food.
Q: Who made a lasting impression on you?
A: Ashok Ferrey. He gave me a copy of his book “Serendipity” which I
am enjoying very much.
Q: Will you start the Rebus series again?
A: This year I am supposed to be having a break and doing a lot of
touring. Next year when I sit down to write, it may be Rebus or Malcolm
Fox, the guy from “The Complaints”. Fox investigates Police misdemeanors
so he is not very popular with his own kind of cops.
Q: Are you going to make him popular?
A: The first book that came out in the UK in September went to number
one. There’s been great reviews, with people leaving comments on Amazon,
to say how much they liked it. The very first Rebus books sold very few
copies. It was Black and Blue, Rebus novel number eight, before people
started paying attention.
Q: Did you sell well at Galle Literary Festival?
A: Yes. I had a huge audience and did two events. I did a workshop on
the craft of writing crime fiction in the bar of a hotel. The crime
novel is not always taken seriously. I think crime fiction tells so much
about society and human nature. That is why it attracts a lot of young
writers. They see very little difference between literature and crime
fiction.
Q: Is that why you set Rebus in Edinburgh?
A: I started writing books about Edinburgh to make sense about
Edinburgh and also because tourists have a two dimensional idea about
Edinburgh, based on museums, traditions and history. The real
contemporary situation is hidden below the surface. That suits crime
fiction very well. It tells that the world around is more complex than
we might think.
Q: Have you been criticized for exposing Edinburgh?
A: In the early days I was. Reviewers said that my books are unlikely
to be recommended by the Tourist Board. Come forward 20 years, there a
Rebus Walking Tour. Tourists come looking for Rebus’s Edinburgh. A tour
guide takes you around Rebus’s Police Station, the apartment blocks he
lives in, the bar that he drinks in because all that is real.
Q: Do they see the seedy side also?
A: A little bit. They go down to the mortuary. They don’t want just
to see the Disneyland, castles and monuments. They want to see something
of the new city.
Q: What makes a best selling crime novelist?
A: You have to have a good story. Crime readers demand a good plot
and you need an interesting character, may be someone who is complex and
troubled which makes him believable. Readers of crime fiction don’t want
their heroes to be supermen. They want their heroes to be fallible and
human. They also want to find new information about the world they live
in.
Q: Are you like Inspector Rebus in characteristics?
A: No. I am very friendly and he is older than me, sixty. He sees the
world in much bleaker terms than I do because of the job he does. He
does not deal with nice happy people but with victims of crime and
criminals. His job has coloured his perceptions of the world.
He would see me politically as being too Liberal. He is quite right
wing and believes in good and evil. Somethings in my books persuade him
that his way of looking at the world is not the only possible way of
looking at it.
When I write my books, I have a little argument with my character
about the way the world is.
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