It's difficult, says bestselling author Ian Rankin, to maintain a balance between touring and meeting fans, and doing what he likes best - writing. How then does he churn out blockbusters with unfailing regularity? Shalaka Paradkar does a bit of sleuthing
There's crime fiction, and then there is Inspector John Rebus.
A now-retired, misanthrope detective, failed father and husband, who has succeeded in upstaging Robert Burns and is neck and neck with JK Rowling as Edinburgh's chief attraction.
Rebus is not a very likeable man, but boy, is he popular! The Rebus books have been translated into 26 languages, and account for ten per cent of all book sales in the UK.
Rebus' creator, Ian Rankin, on the other hand, is immensely likeable.
Dressed in jeans and a faded T-shirt, he smiles a lot and takes time to talk to his Dubai fans as he signs copies of Exit Music, Rankin's latest and Rebus' last outing as detective.
Hundreds queued up on a Friday morning at the Jashanmal bookstore to meet Rankin. However, there is little about him that suggests fame, money and phenomenal success.
When he tells you in his soft Edinburgh burr that he was once a murder suspect, it's the classic twist in the plot.
Rankin once walked into Leith police station to talk with police officers as part of the research for his first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses.
He hadn't slept a couple of nights, looked every bit the down-at-heel university student (which he was) and proceeded to ask them questions about a child being murdered.
He told them the plot of his novel, which incredibly enough, was just like a case the officers were investigating about a serial killer. Rankin was interrogated and eventually released. (Incidentally, the real-life case wasn't solved.)
Of course this was before the 47-year-old Rankin was named The King of Tartan Noir, and his face was known to millions of readers. Before he became a bestselling author, Rankin was a rock musician, grape picker, journalist and alcohol researcher.
Today, the devoted husband and father of two, lives with his family in the affluent Merchiston district of Edinburgh, with literary stars such as Alexander McCall Smith and JK Rowling as neighbours.
A campaigner for disabled people's rights, Rankin works for several children's charities. (His 13-year-old son Kit has Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes speech impairment, learning difficulties,
a short attention span and problems with balance.)
The book that marked Rankin's commercial breakthrough was Black and Blue, which won the 1997 Gold Dagger. The novel incorporated the story of Bible John, who murdered three women in the late '60s in Glasgow, was never caught and became a bogeyman figure in the west of Scotland.
In 1988, Rankin was elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also winner of the 1991-92 Chandler-Fulbright Award, one of the world's most prestigious detective fiction prizes (funded by the estate of Raymond Chandler).
I
I can only write ... in my office at home.
I cannot write when I am on tour. I start when the kids go to school and finish by 3 when they get home. I can't write when the kids are at home - there's noise, and they are busy, and they want to use the computer. I don't smoke, so to fill up the gaps and pauses between chapters, I eat a lot of chocolate.
I am obsessive by nature. I maintained a diary from the age of 10 to 30, writing a page every day. I'm really sorry
I stopped writing my diary.
Writing fiction is ... a great balm to me.
I think writing is therapy anyway, whether you realise it or not. Subconsciously, a lot of yourself goes into books.
A while ago I did not like the name I chose for John Rebus. I wish I had chosen something more normal. I had to run around explaining to people why I had chosen the name.
Actually now I think it's a good name. It's memorable. John is a good strong first name. And a Rebus is a kind of picture puzzle and he is a puzzle - so it was perfect for him.
I usually get my ideas ... from something I read about in the news, or something that someone says. That gets me started. I ask myself questions about the way the world is. The questions eventually turn into a plot. In The Naming of the Dead, everything that happened in Scotland during the week of the G8 summit was in the book.
I don't know who's been my biggest influence ... on my writing style.
Almost every author I have ever read may have influenced the way I write. Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde has been the most important book to me ... because I am writing about the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of human existence, and especially in Edinburgh.
ME
Me and my childhood in FifeI grew up in a council house in Cardenden, a former mining town 30 miles north of Edinburgh, Scotland.
My parents never had enough money to own their own home. They were working class people - my Dad, James, worked at the Rosyth naval dockyard. My mum, Isobel, was from Yorkshire and worked in a factory.
When they married, my parents already had a daughter each. My two sisters were much older than me, and I grew up like an only child.
That made me self sufficient. I would sit in my bedroom, listen to music and write song lyrics for bands that didn't exist.
There were few books at home but I frequented the local library. From the age of eight, I was writing - trying to write comic books, song lyrics, drawing cartoons … All my early drawings and writings had to be given away when my parents died.
The nice thing about Cardenden was that you were surrounded by family and friends. It was a tight-knit community, like being a member of a tribe. Everybody knew everybody else.
We had an aunt and uncle who live two doors away, another lived over the back wall, a third was just five minutes away. That meant it was a safe place to grow up - there was no violence. You never had to worry about your children when you went out.
As a child I didn't know that the coal mines were closing down and people were going to be unemployed. It was only as a teenager that I realised there were problems in Cardenden. But by then I knew I was going to leave.
I was clever, I was probably going to go to university, becoming the first member of my family to do so. At school (Beath Senior High School in Cowdenbeath) I was a good student, well behaved. I enjoyed most subjects at school.
We had a few vicious teachers, and, of course, teachers still used the belt back then. But I had some great teachers, too, who encouraged me in whatever I was trying to do at the time.
In my first year at university, I joined a punk rock band that a few of my friends from Fife had put together. They were looking for a singer and with no experience at all, I said, "Yeah, I can do that."
The band existed for only six months, maybe a year. I wrote the lyrics, the keyboardist wrote the music. We played six concerts. And we recorded the songs in a recording studio. I still have a copy of the record.
Me and MY LITERARY CAREER
At University, I opted to read English at Edinburgh ... but I think I really thought I would become a rock star. After completing my degree, I undertook a PhD on (Scottish author) Muriel Spark.
Between my undergraduate and postgraduate years, my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I went to France to work for a vineyard. We picked grapes. There was a farm attached to the vineyard.
At the time I was mostly writing short stories, poems and the like, trying to find a voice and to discover the kind of writer I wanted to be.
So I experimented with all kinds of genres: trying to write science fiction, horror, all kinds of different things. In the process I stumbled upon Rebus, and that was good.
I was still a student when my first book was published in February 1986. The Flood had a lot of references to places and people from my childhood, as well as stories told by my father.
The funding for my postgraduate degree ran out in June that same year. In July, I married Miranda Harvey, who was a year senior to me at university, and moved to London where Miranda worked as a senior civil servant.
Miranda has been a huge influence on my life. Miranda was studying the same subjects as I was at University, but being senior she'd already done the work I was doing.
We have had great adventures. Had it not been for her
I would never have moved to London, and subsequently to France. We've known each other since 1981, and been married 21 years.
When we got married, she supported me for a few months. I just got fed up sitting in the house all day, trying to write books.
So eventually I took a job editing Hi-fi magazine while trying to be a full-time writer. But it was difficult and I wasn't making any money. I tried my hand at various jobs.
For some time I was an alcohol researcher - conducting research into the drinking habits of teenagers, how drinking affected them, at what age they started, and so on. It did not involve any tasting.
Eventually, in 1990, my wife and I took a fairly momentous decision to move to France - Dordogne.
In France, my books were the only income we had. Our fridge overflowed with lettuce, peas and cabbage that Miranda grew in our garden. We thought we would be able to sustain ourselves on what we grew on our own land.
We stayed for six years in France, I produced four Rebus novels and another three under the pseudonym of Jack Harvey.
Both our sons, Jack and Kit, were born in France. But I couldn't speak French very well, I became homesick and my publishers were complaining that it was difficult to promote me when I was so far away.
When Kit was 18 months old, he was diagnosed with Angelman Syndrome. We returned to Edinburgh in 1996 and bought a house in Merchiston essentially for Kit so he can have one level for himself.
ME and COMMERCIAL SUCCESS
Well, it's nicer to have money than not to have money. But I am not very ostentatious. I don't buy fast cars or anything (like that).
Because my younger son Kit is severely disabled, the money means that he will be looked after even after my wife and I are no more. There will be money to care for him. So that's fantastic. It would never have happened without the Rebus books. We live a very comfortable life.
I don't have to go to the office every day. I don't have to wear a suit and tie. It's a nice life. There is nothing uncomfortable.
But there is so much media and touring involved with being a successful author, that you don't get much time to write books. You get further and further away from the very thing you love - which is writing.
Trying to balance the two: the touring and meeting fans and doing interviews with the time for yourself, the time for ideas and writing books - that's a difficult balance.
Me and MY WRITELY ROUTINE
Usually in the mornings between 9 and 10 o' clock, my wife and I go to the local café (the same café that JK Rowling goes to), we chat, catch up on the news, and that's when my brain starts thinking - after that first cup of coffee.
Once kids come along, you don't get that much time to write. When we first meet Rebus, he has a 12-year-old daughter. But I was 26 when I wrote that and did not have children.
Once you have kids, you can empathise, you know what's it like, you know the processes associated with being a father. It was easier in the later books to write about Rebus' relationship with his daughter, once I had kids myself.
I do feel sorry for my 15-year-old son Jack when he goes to his high school. There are pictures of me on the walls, because the kids in the English Department study my books. If you're the son of someone, it's very embarrassing I think. He gets teased a lot.
ME and EDINBURGH
When I was 18, I moved to Edinburgh as a student, and left in 1986. We moved back to Edinburgh in 1996.
It's the main character of my books.
I am not sure I fell in love with the city, I just found it a very complex place.
I couldn't make sense of it and didn't know what made it work. And as I had done as a kid, to try and make sense of the world, I wrote about it.
To try and make sense of Edinburgh: its history, its present, the social dynamics and the politics, I wrote novels about Edinburgh. It's the central character in my books - I cannot imagine them without Edinburgh.
There's no other place that did that to me. Though I lived for six years in France, I never wrote about it. I was always writing about Edinburgh all the time I lived in France.
The Scottish Tourist Board were furious at first. But now they are okay, since people are coming there to see the city of Rebus.
For a long time, Edinburgh was a city that seemed to live in the past. People would come to Edinburgh to see the castles, museums, the tradition and the history. But now there are writers based here, people realise it's a contemporary city as well.
And that's a city that can be visited as well - you can walk into the police station that Rebus works in, visit the places he goes to… So it's been good that people can come and see the Trainspotting Edinburgh or the Rebus Edinburgh.
MYSELF
After living with him for 20 years, how did you prepare yourself to say goodbye to Rebus?
It was just three years ago that I knew I would have to retire Rebus. Most people in Britain retire at 65. So I thought I had plenty of time.
Then a detective I knew in Edinburgh told me that detectives in Scotland retire at 60. That was just a couple of years later. I didn't prepare for his retirement.
I just got a story idea and thought what would Rebus do when he's confronted with the thought of retirement in a few days.
He wouldn't sit and mope, or cry about having to retire. He would get on with his final ten days as a police officer.
I had deadline after deadline when I was writing Exit Music. Just like a journalist. I couldn't sit and think about how to say goodbye.
After I finished writing Exit Music, I just walked over to another desk in the office and started writing a libretto - the Scottish Opera has commissioned me to write a libretto as part of its campaign to open up opera to more people.
I am working with the film composer Craig Armstrong, best known for his scores for Moulin Rouge! and Romeo and Juliet. I am also in the middle of writing Hellblazer, a comic book for the American publisher DC Comics, which has got to be done by Christmas.
Is there such a thing as the perfect murder?
There have been huge differences in police procedure work in the last 20 years. In the first Rebus novel, there are no computers, a fax machine is an exotic object and nobody has mobile phones.
You have to go into a call booth to make a telephone call. DNA analysis was in its infancy.
Rebus is a dinosaur. He comes from a generation when they didn't use this technology. There have been vast changes since then. DS Siobhan Clarke, his partner, knows about these technologies and how to use them.
So, to answer your question - no.
In the future, there will be no such thing as the perfect crime. With the advances in DNA analysis and forensics as applied to trace evidence, it will be just a matter of time before you know whodunnit.
