Our November/December author is Scottish writer Ian Rankin.
Rankin is best known for his Inspector Rebus mystery series. “While solving crime is at the center of each story, readers have returned time and again to Rebus (there are more than 15 books in the series) not only for his detection skills, but for a disturbing look into the inner workings of a good man trying to stem a rising tide of evil” in the town of Edinburgh, says Novelist.
In fact, Rankin calls Edinburgh the “Jekyll and Hyde City.” ‘I owe a great debt to Robert Louis Stevenson and to the city of his birth. In a way they both changed my life. Without Edinburgh’s split nature Stevenson might never have dreamt up Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and without Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I might never have come up with my own alter ego Detective Inspector John Rebus,” Rankin told The Evening News.
The hardboiled aspect of the Rebus novels has led to them being dubbed “Tartan Noir.” In an interview with Powell’s Books, Rankin recalled:
When I wrote the first Rebus novel I didn't really think of myself as a crime writer at the time. I thought of myself as writing in this gothic Scots tradition. And the fact that I was writing about a cop was because I thought writing about a cop was a good way of looking at society from top to bottom. He's got access to all areas. He can be interviewing the movers and shakers, the politicians and the businessmen. He can also be interviewing people who are unemployed, have drug problems, are prostitutes, whatever. So you can actually look at society from the bottom to the top in one character, which you can't really do with many other characters. And then the book was published and it was published as a mystery novel and I thought "Oh my God, I've become a crime writer by accident."
Rankin has been awarded the Chandler-Fulbright Award, two Crime Writers' Association Dagger prizes for short stories and Gold Dagger for Fiction, the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel, and the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Author of the Year.
Rankin says he finds it odd that he lives on the same street as fellow Scot writers J.K. Rowling and Alexander McCall Smith.
Rankin’s books are ideal for the mystery reader who never wants to read about wretched New York or London again. Click here to see all of Rankin’s books at LVDL.