How Ian Rankin solved the mystery of why audience laughed at John Rebus

Sometimes when we make people laugh, we feel on top of the world. Other times, it can feel like they’re laughing at us.

So when Ian Rankin went to see A Game Called Malice, the play he wrote with Simon Reade, featuring his famous fictional detective John Rebus, he may have had a heart-stopping moment when the audience laughed at a bit that wasn’t meant to be funny.

In the play, the tough Edinburgh cop makes a phone call, saying: “Yeah, my name’s John Rebus, there’s been a… suspicious death.” In an interview with The Scotsman’s Janet Christie, Rankin said: “The first night the audience laughed and I’m going ‘why are they laughing?’”

Ian Rankin outside at The Oxford Bar, the favourite haunt of his character John Rebus | Scott Louden

This is one mystery that Scotsman readers can now attempt to solve, although we are just about to give you the answer so you better be quick. “It’s Taggart, isn’t it?” Rankin explained. “We expect, ‘there’s been a murder’... I didn’t realise there was a gag there until it got the laugh.”

Two great detectives combining in wonderful harmony for a rather special and particularly Scottish moment.