Atlantica - 01.06.2006, Page 15

14 AT L A N T I CA
Through the voice of his most
famous character, Inspector
John Rebus, crime writer Ian Rankin
exposed the Gotham in Edinburgh.
This summer, the author of over
20 books visited Iceland, where
the market for crime mystery has
exploded along with the number of
authors producing it.
It has always been the engaging
plots of his murder mysteries that
have garnered him wide readership –
five have been adapted for television
– but Rankin also uses his popularity
as a platform to discuss greater
social issues. In the course of selling
millions of books, Rankin has found
a way to talk about much more than
murders and their investigations.
DH: You exposed the underbelly of
Edinburgh. How can crime fiction be
used in other countries?
IR: Good crime fiction the world
over deals with universal dilemmas
and big moral questions. My latest
book, Fleshmarket Close, is about
the real murder of an asylum seeker
in Scotland. In reality, it was just a
straight racist murder but it got me
thinking about identity and about
racism and about social and national
identity. How we have only come a
few steps from the cave in our feelings
toward our fellow man.
When you are using the crime
novel to make readers question
themselves – am I a racist? – then
that’s a force for good... But the reader
doesn’t realize that because the reader
is getting a good story. Throughout
this racy-pacey roller coaster ride they
don’t realize that they are being asked
a big question.
DH: Where do you find these stories?
IR: I get stories from everywhere.
The latest book is also about the G8;
throughout the murder story, the
whole G8 thing is bubbling in the
background. It was just such a huge
deal that I thought there was no way
I can’t write about this. These eight
men, leaders of the free world, trying
to decide whether they want to save
Africa, send free aids drugs to Africa,
are they going to save the climate.
There is an enormous amount of
power and responsibility that comes
with that. And of course the riots
that came with it – baton charges,
demonstrations and concerts, all
going on in the background.
The books are getting more
political as I get older. Maybe that’s
because I’m getting more political, or
maybe I’m just getting more angry
about the fact that the world is going
to hell in a handcart.
DH: What kind of power comes with
your popularity?
IR: Somebody once said that writers
don’t change anything. Maybe that’s
true. But lots of members of parliament
in the UK and Scotland are fans of
my books. And if you flag up these
social concerns in your books at least
they know that these problems aren’t
going away and they can’t hide from
these problems.
In Fleshmarket Close I mention a real
life detention center. I was scandalized
to find out that children as young as
six months or a year to two years old
were kept at this place for months on
end with their parents. And there was
no schooling, save a part time teacher
who came in for a couple hours a
week, trying to teach a class of 30 or 40
kids all from different languages and
cultures and ages.
I used the detention center in the
book, and weeks, literally a few weeks
after the book was published, I got a
message from a charity working with
asylum seekers saying that children
would no longer be kept in that
detention center. Now whether that’s
because of the book or whether it had
a part in it I don’t know. But if you don’t
write about these things they don’t go
away anyway.
DH: Is tackling these issues an
imperative for you?
IR: Most people come to my books
because of the character Rebus. They
don’t come because of my point of
view as a writer. The primary aim of the
books is to entertain and keep making
Rebus interesting to them. Fiction has
always got to entertain. Otherwise you
shut the book and throw it across the
room.
You know you’re not going to
change the world by writing a novel.
Even Dan Brown [author of The DaVinci
Code] cannot change the world by
writing a novel. But he has shown
that you can get people interested in
things. In Edinburgh there is a chapel
where the Grail might be buried under
ground. And we now have tourists
digging up the site under the cover
of darkness and trying to dig away
the foundations to find the Holy Grail,
because Dan Brown told ’em it might
be there.
DH: What about the transference of
your books into film?
IR: I don’t watch ’em. And that is for the
very simple reason that I don’t want
actors getting inside my head. Not
so much the faces but the voices, the
voices interfering with the voices that
are already there.
What every author hopes for when
his books are televised or put on film is
that they will get more readers. That’s
the bottom line. Although I’m seen
as a very successful author, in the UK
I’ll sell maybe half a million copies of
the book. On television, 8 or 9 million
people can watch it. Well, that’s a lot
of people who haven’t read the books.
And I’d like them to actually read the
books and find all the stuff that wasn’t
there in the TV versions.
DH: You have been pretty prolific.
How does it work for you? What’s your
writing ritual?
IR: First thing I get a theme or idea.
Then I’ll sit and gnaw away at in my
head and will procrastinate wildly. I
do a lot of research that doesn’t go
anywhere and eventually I say, ‘Oh
god, I have a deadline. I better start
writing.’
I trust in the muse. I fly by the seat
of my pants, or however you want to
call it. I just make it up.
DH: What’s it like going on a book
tour?
Best-selling Scottish author Ian Rankin explains how the crime novel’s hyperbolic plots can deliver readers a healthy dose of reality
Medicine Man
Interviewed by D. Heimpel
009 airmail Atlantica 406 .indd 14 23.6.2006 11:23:19