Reading Ian Rankin
The crime writer, whose new Rebus novel is In A House Of Lies, is giving his archives to the National Library of Scotland: “There might be material there for some future PhD researcher … long after I’m dead.”
WHAT BOOKS ARE ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND?
Too many! The latest offerings from Michael Connelly (Dark Sacred Night) and Lee Child (Past Tense), for starters. Then there’s Machiavelli’s The Prince, which a fan gave me on my recent UK book tour. The last book I read was Hush Hush, by the British mystery author Mel Sherratt.
DESCRIBE YOUR IDEAL READING EXPERIENCE (WHEN, WHERE, WHAT, HOW).
I do most of my reading either last thing at night in bed, or when I’m travelling. Right now I’m doing a lot of travelling. Trains, planes and ships. I’ll plug in headphones, play some ambient music and lose myself in a book.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK OF ALL TIME?
That’s such a tough question and the answer would change from day to day. MayMuriel be Spark’s The Prime Of Miss Jean Bro
die. If I describe it as an absolute Tardis of a book, Dr. Who fans may underIt’s stand. bigger on the inside than the outside.
WHICH BOOKS GOT YOU HOOKED ON CRIME FICTION?
Ruth Rendell was one of the f i r s t crime authors I read. The Scottish novelist William McIlvanney also wrote three hugely influential books featuring a detective called Laidlaw. Then there were the Americans: Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, James Ellroy...
WHO (BESIDES INSPECTOR REBUS) IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTIONAL DETECTIVE? AND THE BEST VILLAIN?
Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch might just be my favourite detective. He reminds me so much of my own character John Rebus. But I also have a lot of time for TV’s
Columbo. As for villains, the gangster in my Inspector Rebus series (Morris Gerald Cafferty) owes a lot to Mick Ballou in Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder series.
WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD MYSTERY?
I think mystery fiction offers the complete package: a strong sense of place, complex main characters, moral and societal issues, roller coaster plotting. If you give me all of those, I’m happy as a reader.
WHAT KINDS OF STORIES ARE YOU DRAWN TO? AND WHAT DO YOU STEER CLEAR OF?
I’m fairly eclectic in my tastes. I’ll be rereading Bleak House one week and Carl Hiaasen or Elif Shafak the next. But I do have blind spots. For example, I love science fiction movies but don’t seem able to read sci-fi.
WHAT BOOKS MIGHT WE BE SURPRISED TO FIND ON YOUR SHELVES?
There’s a British novelist called Jilly Cooper. Her work is often called “women’s fiction”. She writes frothy romps with vast rosters of mainly comically exaggerated characters. I “discovered” her when I was trapped by snow in a French farmhouse and those were the only books in there that I hadn’t read. Rivals became a particular favourite. It’s all about the battle for a TV station franchise.
WHO’S YOUR FAVOURITE OVERLOOKED OR UNDERAPPRECIATED WRITER?
I’m going to have to say Muriel Spark. She was an international best seller in her time but seemed to fade from view. In this her centenary year, fans have been shouting her name from the rooftops. There are new editions of her novels (I’ve contributed an introduction to her New York novel, The Hothouse By The East River), and two places in Edinburgh (the city of her birth) have been named in her honour. She remains an author of great power and complexity.
WHAT KIND OF READER WERE YOU AS A CHILD?
I grew up in a home with few books. My parents left school at 14 or 15 and I only ever remember them reading books on summer vacation. But comics provided affordable literacy and I got hooked on them —
Batman, Superman, Fantastic Four, etc. Our village library was both refuge and place of wonder to me, and soon I realised that there were movies I wasn’t allowed to see (the likes of The Godfather and OneFlew
Over The Cuckoo’s Nest being restricted to those 15 and over) but that no librarian or bookseller was going to censor the written versions. Those were the books I began to devour, and soon enough I was trying to write my own comics and stories.
FAVOURITE CHILDHOOD LITERARY CHARACTER OR HERO?
I’d probably have to come back to comics again and say Batman. Such colourful adventures and mind-bending villains. The village of my childhood may have been grey, but my imaginative world was kaleidoscopic and technicolour. WHAT’S THE BEST BOOK YOU EVER RECEIVED AS A GIFT? When I was a postgraduate student (writing a thesis on Muriel Spark), a friend presented me with a birthday gift of the first three volumes of Anthony Powell’s 12-novel sequence A Dance To The Music Of Time. Powell was a terrible snob and his books mostly deal with the upper crust and their lives of privilege. But he was also an extremely elegant stylist and though I was reluctant I became a fan, devouring all 12 volumes. We follow the central character, Nicholas Jenkins, from school days through World War II to eventual old age as a respected novelist. The cast is large and memorable and I learnt a lot from Powell about how to write about a central character who ages over the course of an
IF YOU COULD REQUIRE THE PRIME MINISTER TO READ ONE BOOK, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
The British prime minister could do worse than read something European, perhaps a history of the continent, especially post-World War II.
WHAT BOOK DID YOU FEEL YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LIKE, AND DIDN’T? DO YOU REMEMBER THE LAST BOOK YOU PUT DOWN WITHOUT FINISHING?
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel Sunset Song has been voted the best Scottish book of all time. I’ve tried to read it a couple of times but, to my shame, it has defeated me. I can’t really explain why; I just couldn’t get on with it. I’ll happily give it another try at some point in the future. The last book I failed to finish was probably one of Iain M. Banks’s science fiction novels. We were friends and I loved his non sci-fi work, so I persevered with his sci-fi but to no avail.
IF YOU WERE TO WRITE SOMETHING BESIDES MYSTERIES, WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE?
If I didn’t write mysteries, maybe I’d write comics/graphic novels. I still read them and love them. I have a fantasy that one day I’ll write a great Judge Dredd story.
YOU’RE ORGANISING A LITERARY DINNER PARTY. WHICH THREE WRITERS, DEAD OR ALIVE, DO YOU INVITE?
I’d be a mute host, listening intently to the conversation between Muriel Spark, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens. Actually, I’d have one question for R.L.S: What was the original plot of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which his partner Fanny disliked so much he destroyed it?