Murder most mature After three decades, crime writer Ian Rankin is still getting to know his signature character By: Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson  Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018 Last Modified: 10:10 AM CDT Friday, Oct. 26, 2018 Updates

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This article was published 24/10/2018 (2157 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you spot Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin lurking in the corner of a neighbourhood pub — be it his sleuth John Rebus’s preferred Edinburgh hangout, the Oxford Bar or otherwise — you’d best consider heading in the opposite direction.

“Every writer loiters with intent,” Rankin says by phone from Toronto in advance of his Winnipeg appearance, which brings him to McNally Robinson Booksellers Friday in support of In A House of Lies, his 22nd novel starring Scottish sleuth John Rebus. “We sit there, and we’re sucking the souls out of your body — taking your mannerisms, your tics, your intonation. You’ve got to be careful when you’re hanging out with crime writers especially — we’ll steal you and use you in our books.”

Over the course of three decades of John Rebus novels, as well as a handful of other books, the 58-year-old Rankin has established himself as one of the genre’s most popular, prolific and decorated writers.

In a House of Lies sees a retired Rebus, saddled with emphysema from nearly two dozen books’ worth of smoking, once more lurking around a murder case, again in tandem with his protégé, detective investigator Siobhan Clarke.

When a long-missing body turns up bound in the boot of a car deep in the Scottish woods, the murky details of an old case lead the pair to examine how their colleagues may have botched the initial investigation — perhaps purposefully.

As Rankin’s writing has evolved over the course of 30 years, so, too, has his relationship with his star detective. “When I wrote the first book, I was maybe a bit too young and naïve — I was in my early 20s, and here I was writing about a guy who was already 40 years old, divorced and had been in the army, who had life experiences I never had. It’s taken quite a few books for me to know him, to get inside his head.”

As always, the city of Edinburgh looms large over In a House of Lies. “Edinburgh is always changing: new buildings going up, whole parts of town are changing,” he says. “A lot of people think they know Edinburgh, but there’s more to it than you think. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh’s book, is set in this seedy port area. That’s now where you go for a Michelin-starred meal.”

Using a real-life locale helps draw the reader into Rebus’s world. “I like playing that game with the reader, so that if they come to Edinburgh, they can walk in Rebus’s footsteps,” Rankin explains. “And it breaks down the barriers between the real and fictional world, so that people really start to believe these stories — and in my books, the germ of the novel is usually a true story, something that’s actually happened.”

For a time it seemed 2007’s Exit Music, the 17th Rebus novel, would be the sleuth’s last, as Rankin’s focus shifted to offshoot books starring Insp. Malcolm Fox. But if Rebus thought he was done working Scottish murders, he was dead wrong; Rankin dragged him back into the spotlight for 2012’s Standing in Another Man’s Grave, and hasn’t given him much time off since.

“I’ve been writing about this guy for 30 years now — he still intrigues me,” Rankin says, laughing. “People sometimes wonder how you keep a series fresh after all this time. It’s because Rebus keeps changing: he’s getting older in more or less real time, he’s got health issues he didn’t have before, he’s no longer a cop. That gives me new challenges, but every new challenge is also an opportunity.”

And while Rankin foresees the focus of his future fiction shifting from Rebus to Siobhan Clarke, his iconic detective shouldn’t get too comfy in the back corner of the Oxford Bar.

“I’ve still got stuff to learn about him,” Rankin says. “I think there might be a bit of gas left in his tank.”

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