Exclusive:Why Ian Rankin went to prison for his new 25th Rebus book

Ian Rankin slips into Edinburgh’s Oxford Bar, the pub where the multi-award winning multimillion worldwide bestselling writer of over 30 novels first created his fictional detective John Rebus, and slides into the policeman’s favourite seat.

We’re here to talk about his latest John Rebus thriller, which opens with the legendary detective incarcerated in Edinburgh’s Saughton prison.

With his appeal stalled, Rebus is starting to fear the worst and time hangs heavy until a murder in a locked cell sees all of his instincts kick in. With Rebus on the inside and sidekick Siobhan Clarke on the outside solving a parallel missing person case, the pair are back in the thick of things.

Author Ian Rankin in The Oxford Bar, Edinburgh, the pub where he started writing the John Rebus crime series in the 1980s. His lastest Rebus novel, Midnight and Blue, is published this month. Pic: Scott Louden. With thanks to everyone at The Oxford Bar, 8 Young St, Edinburgh EH2 4JB, (0131 539 7119)

A writer at the top of his game, this time round 64-year-old Rankin has turned his talents to a twin-engined plot, an Edinburgh-based police procedural combined with a locked cell mystery.

“Rebus is in Saughton Prison, HMP Edinburgh, where he would be surrounded by people he put inside as a detective or people who hate him because he was a detective and want him dead,” says Rankin.

“So there’s drama and tension and risk from the get-go. And then I thought ‘what happens if there’s a murder in the jail and it’s an impossible murder, a locked cell mystery?’ There’s a branch of crime fiction called the locked room mystery, but I don’t know if too many people have done one. So you open the cell in the morning, a prisoner’s dead, no murder weapon, who did it? Who are you going to ask to investigate? Rebus.”

In Midnight and Blue, it’s entertaining to see how well Rebus adapts to prison after the lengths he’s gone over the years to avoid it.

Ian Rankin outside The Oxford Bar in Edinburgh, his local, and detective John Rebus's favourite pub. Rankin's latest Rebus novel, Midnight and Blue, is published this month. Pic: Scott Louden. With thanks to everyone at The Oxford Bar, 8 Young St, Edinburgh EH2 4JB, (0131 539 7119)

“Well, he’s always been in institutions,” says Rankin. “He was in the army for a while, which is an institution where you follow orders, then he was in the police for a long time, where you’re supposed to follow orders - he didn’t always do it - and now he’s in a prison where everything is regulated.”

And Rebus is used to being around police and criminals.

“Yeah,” says Rankin. “He’s got stories to tell. He talks to the guards, because they’re always interested in him having been a cop, and to the prisoners, although he doesn’t ask them what they’ve done, because that could lead to trouble.”

Rankin started the Rebus novels in this room with the first book published in 1987. Why is he still writing about Rebus (we mean this in a good way)?

Author Ian Rankin outside The Oxford Bar, Edinburgh, the pub where he started writing the John Rebus detective series in the 1980s. The lastest novel, Midnight and Blue, is published this month. Pic: Scott Louden. With thanks to everyone at The Oxford Bar, 8 Young St, Edinburgh EH2 4JB, (0131 539 7119)

“I know! God knows,” he says, “but I guess because he’s just a very useful means of investigating the world. He stands in for me, he questions the world on my behalf. He’s an intriguing character. He’s charismatic. I still don’t quite know what makes him tick. I’ve not quite got to the core of him.

“And he keeps changing, so he’s an interesting character to write about. For example a few books ago I gave him COPD so when I went into the prison to research I said what would happen with this and they said we’ve got NHS nurses and he would get his inhaler. But they said you’ve got to be careful with the inhalers because prisoners use them for bongs, so that detail is in the book as well.

“So every time I think I’m done with him there’s something else, I think ‘what about if I put him in this situation, what would I learn about him?’”

And what did he learn about Rebus by putting him in prison?

Ian Rankin says part of the appeal of his Rebus character is his ability to get under the skin of Edinburgh. Pic: Scott Louden. With thanks to everyone at The Oxford Bar, 8 Young St, Edinburgh EH2 4JB, (0131 539 7119)

“That he’s a really good detective and he’s thrawn. If you give him something to do, he’ll do it. That he’s not as tough as he used to be, physically not as able, he doesn’t win fights any more. He gets in trouble a couple of times in this book, physically, and there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s a 70-year-old man with COPD.

“I’ve learned that he quite likes prison life. That’s the existence he has at home. He lives in one room. As long as he’s got a few books and can listen to a wee bit of music, he’s quite happy.“

Tell us about the title, Midnight and Blue

“It wasn’t the first title or the working title. The working title was so long that my publisher said there wouldn’t be room for my name on the front of the book if we used it. It was something like When I Hear Those Church Bells Drown, something like that, I think it’s a line from a song, anyway it’s a bloody long title. So I bounced it around with my publisher, my agent, my wife and I liked Midnight and Blue because it has resonances with Black and Blue, which was my first successful book, and it sounds like a jazz song. It doesn’t really mean anything but it’s a good title. The one reference in the book is when Rebus describes the female prison officer’s car as ‘midnight blue’.

Rebus reflects on his life when he’s in prison, what conclusions does he come to?

“Well he’s got a lot of regrets about the way he conducted himself personally, his family life. He’s had a fraught relationship with his daughter down the years which is now a lot calmer.

“And I think Rebus comes to a clearer understanding that there are many reasons why people end up in prison and it doesn’t always mean they’re irretrievably bad people. They get unlucky, personal circumstance, addiction issues, debt, or they could have been abused and so they get in trouble. They’ve got all that back story, and I think one of the officers said to me, not everybody in here should be in here, but there’s nowhere else for them to go. The counselling and resources are limited but on the other hand there are very good things, like education courses are run by Fife College, a librarian provided by Edinburgh Council, NHS nurses, addiction counselling, all kinds of stuff when they’ve got the means, the people and the money to do it.”

Like Rebus, did you reflect too, on your life, in the process of writing this 25th Rebus novel?

“Well, I was very glad I’d never been to jail. I don’t think I would cope with it in the way Rebus does. I think I would get claustrophobic very quickly. That lack of freedom, inability to walk out the front door, I think would be horrible for me. Not being able to go for a pint.”

He pauses and takes a sip of his drink.

“There’s a bit where Rebus is on the phone to somebody on the outside and says ‘are you in the pub?’, ‘What are you drinking?’. He’s missing it. He says I’ve not seen or smelt rain in a while. All the things we very much take for granted. So on his one outing from prison - without giving away too much - he’s seeing the world anew. He’s only been in there for a few months but he’s already saying ‘aw right, this is what the outside world looks like.’”

Is there anything Rankin regrets or would do differently in life if he could?

“Och, I mean there’s loads of things. You always think you could have done things differently for your kids, and you never told your parents how much you loved them, or didn’t tell them enough how much you loved them and then by the time they’re gone it’s too late.

“One thing I would have done is I would have got my parents to write on the back of every single bloody photograph who is in it and when and where was it taken, because we’ve got shoeboxes full of them and no idea who half the people are!”

Is there anybody left he can ask?

“Yeah, my sister Linda, but a lot of them are before her time.

“My family tree really was a mystery to me until very recently when a cousin got in touch over the internet and said I’ve been to France to see where your grandad is buried. I had no idea. He sent me a photograph of this war cemetery in northern France. My grandad, this is on my dad’s side, never came back from World War One, so that was really interesting.”

Will Rankin go to visit the cemetery?

“I might. They also sent photographs of him, when he was in the army and I’d never seen a photograph of him before, or grandmother before because she was dead before I was born. That was extraordinary - so the internet is good for some things.”

So his grandfather came out of the Fife coal mines to go and fight in World War One?

“Yeah, he would have done. And I think he came back on leave, which was when my dad was conceived, then went back to fight and never came home again, leaving my gran with six kids to bring up.”

“The thing is, poor people didn’t really take that many photographs until the sixties came along and you had cheap cameras. So my parents’ generation weren’t photographing each other all the time. I know a fair bit about my mum because I’ve got an aunty left in Bradford who’s now in her nineties who I sat down with and jotted it all down, but again, photographs, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photograph of my mum’s dad. He ran a pub in Bradford.”

No wonder Rankin feels so at home in The Oxford Bar.

With the 25th book being launched, what are Rankin’s future plans for Rebus?

“There’s not a plan,” he says. “There’s not a route map of this series. I just sit down one day and go ‘I think I’ll write a book, oh it feels like a Rebus book, who else do I need? Siobhan, yeah, Fox yeah.’”

What did Rankin think of the latest TV version of Rebus, written by Gregory Burke and starring Richard Rankin?

“Greg Burke made a lot of changes, but I think they’re good changes. I think it all works. But even I don’t know who killed the guy on his doorstep at the end. He’s not told me. He knows, but he’s not told me.”

“I watched it in weekly installments with my wife on TV. But we were the only people that did it that way, one at a time.”

And what about the play, A Game Called Malice, starring Gray O’Brien as Rebus, which he wrote with Simon Reade. Did he enjoy that?

“I loved it. I went every night when it was on in Edinburgh. All the Edinburgh lines got a laugh, the Glasgow line got a laugh, and you get two plays for the price of one, because you’ve got the fictional whodunnit that the characters are working out and at the same time you’re getting to know about them and what secrets they might be hiding. Then in the second half the proper murder comes in and Rebus slowly but surely picks them all off. And then you get the twist…”

Rankin is satisfied that it’s not obvious whodunnit, judging from the audience on the nights he was there.

“I would ask everybody at half time, ‘who do you think did it?’ I took mates along, one of them is an ex-cop, and he didn’t get it.”

Hearing the audience laughing was a particular pleasure for Rankin, who has had to cut the puns and jokes down in the books because they don’t translate into other languages. Is that a sadness for him, given that his hero is named after a puzzle device combining pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases?

“Yeah, it is. I love making bad jokes. I loved putting the jokes in the play. Although some of the laughs in the play, I’m going ‘why are they laughing?’ and then you realise. For example, Rebus is on the phone and he’s going ‘yeah my name’s John Rebus, there’s been a… suspicious death’ and the first night the audience laughed and I’m going ‘why are they laughing’? It’s Taggart isn’t it? We expect ‘There’s been a murder’. But I didn’t realise there was a gag there until it got the laugh.”

Now that Midnight and Blue is published, what will Rankin write next?

“I don’t know. I’m absolutely knackered,” he says.

He said that after his last book, last time we talked.

“I know. I mean I had the TV series, and now we’re running around trying to get the money for season two. And the play, I was heavily involved in rehearsals and went every night of the Edinburgh run. Now this book is about to come out so I’ll be on the promotion trail touring the UK. It’s been a busy year.

“So next year is mostly a year of not writing. My wife said next year is another travel year. Our first trip is around South America, and she’s making sure there’s not much time for me to write.

However…

“I’ve got a project, not a big project, but something I wrote in short form that I’m thinking of expanding. It’ll be writing for fun, but no deadlines because I’m out of contract.”

Does that worry him, to be out of contract?

“No, not at all, I think it frees me up. My wife says that means you get to write a book when you get a great idea, not because you have to deliver a book by June.”

He could write whatever he wants.

“A cookbook,” he says.

Really? Does he cook?

“Well... A Rebus’s cookbook would be a short one. His famous fish fingers,” he laughs. “Rolls, pies, sausage rolls, bridies…”

Why does Rankin think Rebus is such a popular character?

“Readers would have to answer that, not me. But I think he’s charismatic, fun to be around, he’s got a slight edge of danger to him. If you had a problem you’d want him on your side.

“Women seem to find him attractive, men quite like his lifestyle - he can sit in a chair all night listening to music and drinking whisky and nobody’s going to say ‘it’s time to go to bed now’.

“Also he’s investigating Edinburgh. He gets access to every area of Edinburgh and I think people like that about him. He stands for Edinburgh.”

What has writing about Rebus for all these years taught Rankin about himself?

“That I prefer success to failure.”

“I feel like I’ve spent longer inside his head than I have in the real world. Which I think could be problematic. There are whole family holidays I don’t remember. Miranda [his wife] says that’s because I was thinking about a book I was doing. Whole years and decades have passed and all I can say is well, that was the decade I wrote that book, or that book.

So your life is measured by Rebus?

“My life has been measured out in a fictional character’s life, yes.” He laughs.

And will there be more Rebus books?

“I don’t know,” he says.

So this is not the last one?

“Well, I think it’s quite a good ending. I think if that was the end of the series I’d be quite happy with that as an ending. And off the top of my head I don’t know anything I want to do with him at the moment. But maybe in six months time another great idea will come to me and I’ll just have to write the book.

“He’ll tell me if he’s got any more stories left in him.”

Midnight and Blue, the new John Rebus thriller, by Ian Rankin is published by Orion Fiction in hardback, eBook and audio on 10 October 2024, £25

With thanks to everyone at The Oxford Bar, 8 Young St, Edinburgh EH2 4JB, (0131 539 7119)