Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin
Born	Fife, Scotland
Pen name	Jack Harvey
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	Scottish
Period	1986- Present
Genre	Crime fiction
Notable works	Inspector Rebus
Website
http://www.ianrankin.net

Ian Rankin OBE, DL, (born 28 April 1960, in Cardenden, Fife) is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.

Background

Rankin's standard biography states that before becoming a full-time novelist he worked as grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist, college secretary and punk musician.; he was also a Literature tutor at the University of Edinburgh where he retains an involvement with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. After graduating from Edinburgh University he moved to London for four years and then rural France for six while he developed his career as a novelist. He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath (which has recently been rebuilt).

He lives in Edinburgh with his wife Miranda and their two sons Jack and Kit.

Writing

Rankin did not set out to be a crime writer. He thought his first novels Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek were mainstream books, more in keeping with the Scottish traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson and even Muriel Spark (the subject of Rankin's uncompleted Ph.D. thesis), and was disconcerted by their classification as genre fiction. He was reassured by Scottish novelist, Allan Massie, who tutored Rankin while Massie was writer-in-residence at Edinburgh University: who would want to be a dry academic writer when "they could be John Buchan?"

Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels are mainly set in Edinburgh, and are major contributions to the Tartan Noir genre. Four of the novels were televised on ITV, starring John Hannah. In early 2006 Ken Stott took over in the part of Rebus, and was hailed by many fans as an ideal fit for the character.

Rankin confirmed that he will soon start work on a five- or six-issue run on the comic book Hellblazer, although the story may be turned into a standalone graphic novel instead. He talked about this at length with Simon Mayo on Radio Five Live.

Controversy

In 2007, Rankin was criticised for comments he made about the escalation of violence in crime novels written by women, particularly lesbians, such as Patricia Cornwell and Val McDermid. The latter was especially offended and, speaking at the Edinburgh Books Festival, described the remark as "arrant rubbish", before elaborating: "I find that statement very offensive, I can't even begin to start".

Documentaries

He is a regular contributor to the BBC Two arts programme Newsnight Review. His 3-part documentary series on the subject of evil was broadcast on Channel 4 in December 2002. In 2005 he presented a 30-minute documentary on BBC4 called Rankin on the Staircase in which he investigated the relationship between real-life cases and crime fiction, loosely based on the Michael Peterson murder case as documented in Jean-Xavier Lestrade's documentary series 'Death on the Staircase'. The same year he collaborated with folk musician Jackie Leven on the album Jackie Leven Said.

In 2007, Rankin appeared in programmes for BBC Four exploring the origins of his alter-ego character, John Rebus. Titled "Ian Rankin's Hidden Edinburgh" and "Ian Rankin Investigates Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," Rankin looks at the origins of the character and the events that led to his creation.

Awards and honours

Rankin has been elected as a Hawthornden Fellow and won the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He has also won two Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Dagger prizes for short stories and in 1997 the CWA Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction for Black and Blue (which was also short-listed for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel). He won the Edgar in 2004 for Resurrection Men. In 2005 he was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger to mark a lifetime's achievement in crime writing. In 2008 he won the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Author of the Year, for Exit Music.

He has honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh. , the University of Abertay Dundee, from the University of St Andrews and, in 2005, from the University of Hull. In June 2002 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Golden Jubilee Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.

Bibliography

To date he has written at least 21 novels, including:

Inspector Rebus novels

Ian Rankin announces the title of the final Rebus novel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

1. Knots and Crosses (1987)
2. Hide and Seek (1991)
3. Tooth and Nail (1992 - originally published as Wolfman)
4. Strip Jack (1992)
5. The Black Book (1993)
6. Mortal Causes (1994)
7. Let it Bleed (1995)
8. Black and Blue (1997)
9. The Hanging Garden (1998)
10. Dead Souls (1999)
11. Set in Darkness (2000)
12. The Falls (2001)
13. Resurrection Men (2002)
14. A Question of Blood (2003)
15. Fleshmarket Close (2004)
16. The Naming of the Dead (2006)
17. Exit Music (2007)

Jack Harvey novels

• Witch Hunt (1993)
• Bleeding Hearts (1994)
• Blood Hunt (1995)

Other books

• The Flood (1986 re-released with new introduction in 2005)
• Watchman (1988, reissued with a new introduction in 2004)
• A Good Hanging and Other Stories (1992) (short stories)
• Death is Not the End (1998) (novella later expanded into Dead Souls)
• Beggars Banquet (2002) — short stories (collection featuring both Rebus and other short stories, and Death is not the End)
• Rebus's Scotland: A Personal Journey (2005)
• Doors Open (2008) - originally published as a serial novel in the New York Times
• One City
• A Cool Head - Quick Reads 2009

Recordings

• Jackie Leven Said (Cooking vinyl, 2005), with Jackie Leven

Criticism

• Horsley, Lee, The Noir Thriller (Houndmills & New York: Palgrave, 2001).
• Lanchester, John, ‘Rebusworld’, in London Review of Books 22.9 (27/4/2000), pp. 18-20.
• Lennard, John, 'Ian Rankin', in Jay Parini, ed., British Writers Supplement X (New York & London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004), pp. 243–60
• Mandel, Ernest, Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story (Leichhardt, NSW, & London: Pluto Press, 1984).
• Ogle, Tina, ‘Crime on Screen’, in The Observer (London), 16/4/2000, Screen p. 8.
• Plain, Gill, Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue (London & New York: Continuum, 2002)
• Plain, Gillian, ‘Ian Rankin: A Bibliography’, in Crime Time 28 (2002), pp. 16-20.
• Robinson, David, ‘Mystery Man: In Search of the real Ian Rankin’, in The Scotsman 10/3/2001, S2Weekend, pp.1-4.
• Rowland, Susan, ‘Gothic Crimes: A Literature of Terror and Horror’, in From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell (Houndmills & New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 110-34.

External links

• Official site
• Template:Contemporary writers (British Council)
• BBC Radio Five Live interview on 20 years of Rebus
• Macavity's Interview
• Guardian Books profile, with links to further articles.
• The Reykjavík Grapevine Interview
• CNN interview with Ian Rankin