Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - The Rise by Ian Rankin with Ian Rankin

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

This week's book guest is The Rise by Ian Rankin.Sara and Cariad are joined by the best-selling Scottish crime novelist Ian Rankin to discuss London, Edinburgh, digital books, genre writing and inappropriate tattoos. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you! The Rise by Ian Rankin is available to buy here.You Can follow Ian on Instagram: @ianrankin2Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded by Aniya Das and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdos Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdos Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is The Rise by Ian Rankin. What's it about? The Rise follows Gish, a detective trying to solve the murder of a doorman in a very posh block of flats. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club?

Well, rich people are weird. In this episode, we discuss. London. Edinburgh. Genre writing. Super fans. Digital books. Superrish.

rich and inappropriate tattoos. And joining us this week is Ian Rankin himself. That was bagpipes. Just a warning. In this episode we do talk about cold-blooded murder. Thank you so much for being here. Our sort of nominal premise is weird books. And your book is quite weird because it doesn't exist.

Oh yes, it's not a paper paper book. Like the old-fashioned ones. It's not. Not old-fashioned. That's the fashion. Yeah, I know. No, I mean, hopefully books on vellum will come back eventually. just like cassette tapes are coming back

and videos possibly coming back soon. Really? I didn't hear this. Oh, the kids like video because they like the bad quality. Yeah, exactly. They like a little bit of... Yeah. Like cassettes. They seem to like the hits.

Yeah. All this stuff we didn't like when we were... Well, I didn't like when I was younger. Being a different generation from everybody around this table. Yeah, a weird book in that it's called The Rise and it is coming out only as an e-book and an audio book. Yeah. So there will be a book.

be no physical book and it's the first time I've done that which was part of the attraction for me was doing something a bit different yeah keep you on your toes and it's short I mean it's I think the the pitch was that it's going to be a series of stories coming out from Amazon that will be you can read them or listen to them in one sitting oh I thought it was you had to read them in one sitting and because I have a toddler I had to be really specific I was like no the point of the book is you can't get up you can't stop you can't answer the door Sarah takes rules really seriously. I do, especially because I read it in two sittings. Right, so you've already broken

the balls. But it was two, again, I have two small children, so it was two bedtimes. Because as I'm always saying to you, the Kindle is incredible that you can put a child to bed and still read the story. And it's not like they go, what are you doing? Because it doesn't look very exciting to them. So I did it in two bedtime. I mean, I can't understand why short

stories aren't more popular because they're perfect for commuters. If you're on the tube or the bus or the train or whatever or even if you're walking to and from work, you just plug your headphones in and you've got a story there, a short story, or if you're sitting reading, you've got the one short story in a sitting.

But as a writer, how does it feel when you're having to plot or put clues in and you've got a lot less time? Yeah, I was thinking that, because you're used to writing much longer. Well, again, that was one of the, it keeps on your toes. I mean, as a writer, you can,

if you're, you know, writing the same character for, I don't even want to think how many years is. It's almost 40 years I've been writing about the same character. It's nice to have a break and think about stories in a different way and different ways of telling them. So when someone says to me, do you fancy doing a libretto for an opera, I go yes. Do you fancy doing a comic book?

Yes. Do you fancy doing a play on stage? Yes. Lyrics for a song, no problem. Because it just gets me thinking about how I say what I want to say. And, you know, once given a challenge, and it was a Christmas short story featuring Rebus, my detective. But the editor wanted it to involve a game of Cludeau or similar and a deep-fried mind. Mars bar.

That was the challenge. Yes. I enjoyed that. Well, it's very similar. What Carriad does is... I write deep fried Mars bars. And with an improv show,

I mean, because improvisers sometimes do an hour long, and to the audience, they cannot believe that it's all made up. But it all starts from, usually, two asks, three asks. I do a show called Ostentatious,

which improvised Jane Austen. And it's one. We just get the title for the audience, and that's it. One word. It's too specific. If it said, it has to be about a Mars bar,

it has to be Christmasy. and the body has to be found like that, then the more you add, I think, when you're creating a story, the harder it is. Your brain pings much quicker with something smaller because then you can be that, that, that and that. Whereas, you know, someone starts closing boundaries in on you as a creator. You start, the story gets smaller and smaller, doesn't it?

I think it's why comedians and novelists get on so well when they meet is because we've got very similar skill sets. Because writers, to my mind, are usually quite shy and introverted people. But we learn quite early on that if we're going to publish a book, we've got to go on the road, got to go in the circuit and stand up and talk to an audience

for an hour without boring them to tears and take questions and not know what those questions are going to be and you've got to have new material

because you go back to the same bookshop year after year and you see the same faces in the audience you can't tell them the same old stories you told them

three or four years ago so we are doing improv. We are doing stand up it's just we don't get paid for it. Well, a lot of the time we don't eat

just like that makes you feel better absolutely and also shy introverted people I think that's a shock to new writers because you become successful. And so people want to hear from you and suddenly you're expected to be an entertainer. The minimum length of those sort of Q&As is an hour. Yeah. And the pressure is on you.

So why do you write this book? Yeah, absolutely. Why did you write this? I know, and you always laugh when you say money. It's a job. It's a job. There's an element of commerce and all this. You know, if the money's right, I'll do it.

It would be lovely if he went up to other people, you know, trades people like, so why did you build this wall? Well, I just saw the bricks And I don't know I felt they needed to be connected So I just kept going with it I had a vision of a brick On top of another brick

And then So we should talk about the book The Rise So it is, it's a new detective That's not incorrect, is it? I was going to ask that Because I'm a big Rebus fan And I was wondering if it was tempting

To like ever just shove him in as a cameo It was like, he could have just been in the coffee shop She could just give him Actually, I passed Rebus He said hi Because when you really love, you know I was imagining like in friend sometimes they would have like Brad Pitt would walk in and the audience go,

oh my God, we know him. Imagine if you were reading this story or something like it. And then you're just overhearing a part of a phone call. I'm in enough trouble with the publisher who publishes Rebus. Haven't gone to the opposition for this. If I had introduced Rebus, I think they'd blow a gasket. Yeah, they would. You'd have to put character-adacted.

And the fun of it was getting away from that, getting away from Edinburgh, getting away from Rebus, writing about a much younger cop, a female cop. Have you written a woman detective before? Well, I mean... As a main character? No, not really, because Chavon Clark, who is the detective in my books now and used to be Rebus's protege, I guess, or colleague.

I've never quite found the right story that would mean that she would be the main character. I would love to find a story that felt like it was her story, but it just hasn't happened yet. But with this, I just thought, okay, I can do something different. And, I mean, it's a high concept thriller, which normally I can't do. I can't pitch. You know, people say do a six, do an elevator pitch or a six-word pitch, what your book is going to be or your story is going to be. I can't do that because when I start the story, I don't know where it's going to go.

That's what I was going to ask you, because I just read Patricia Highsmith's book about, and she is, you know, an immensely brilliant plotter, just like yourself. And it was incredible to read, because you always imagine that someone has all of these beats planned out before they even start to sort of flesh it out. And she said, I sort of know the middle one and I start the beginning, and by the middle I know the end. And how's that clear? I think people are surprised that many crime matters are like that.

We don't can need retrofit. We don't start with the ending and work our way backwards. We actually make it up as we go along. So when I start a book, there's usually a murder. There's usually a victim from page one because that grabs the reader from the get-go. But I don't know who killed them or why. And I just follow the detectives around as they're coming to their conclusions. And at some point, the book says, okay, Ian, this is who did it.

this is why they did it and then I can relax. But that doesn't happen until normally two-thirds of the way through the first draft. So until then I'm flying by the seat of my pants. But what's fantastically authentic then about that is because the rise, like all good detective stories, you start, every character has introduced, it could be them. Oh, yeah. And for you writing it.

You're feeling that as well. You're setting up lots of suspects. Yeah. And you think, well, maybe it's you. And I've had that happen. I've had that happen where I think, oh, I'm sure it's this, this is the killer. And then halfway or two-thirds away through the book. the book goes,

Nana, you're wrong, because that person is also dead. And it's somebody else completely. You are your own audience in a way then. You're the same as the audience who comes to. It keeps me interested if I don't know what's going on in a story. Yeah, yeah. And I need to write the story to find out what's going on.

You have to pay attention. I think that's what's lovely about this, even though it's a one sitting, two sitting book. You're having to really like, yeah, everything's coming your way. You're having to be like, hang on a minute. Where are they? What's happening? Where's the key fob?

You can't let things slide by you. Yes, there's lots of things that are set up very quickly at the beginning that you know as a reader are important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot. But, and my brain instantly was like, okay, it's them, is it, is it, oh, no, you know, which is, again. But that's why detective fiction allows the reader to become the detective.

The detective is because you're not the character of the detective. You are there, your God. Your God watching the detectives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, finding out as much as they have. You said that, so obviously the rise is set in London versus what you've written before. How was that? Like what did the two cities offer? Because I feel like we should say the rise is set in this kind of extremely luxury flat complex in the centre of London that lots of famous or rich people live, which felt to me a very London low-kid situation.

I don't think other cities would offer that anonymous money situation. You're saying Edinburgh's poor. No. I'm just saying the particular level of money in London. The thing that feels idiosyncratic about London is that kind of the wealth where the wealthy aren't even there. They own it and they give out swear. It's there if they need it. It's an investment.

You don't even, there's a, you know, the rise is this beautiful glass building in the centre of London that you could walk past and you can have no idea. It's a block of flats or an office, like the anonymousness that London offers. Is that what you kind of wanted to? Yeah, it's that thing about you can sometimes walk through the posher parts of London at night and there's these huge buildings with no lights on. There's no lights on because no one lives there. And the people who do live there want anonymity. They're almost kind of locked away in their little cells. And they order food in from five-star hotels next door.

They don't go out. If they go out, they go out and they're kind of, you know, bulletproof limos that are driven by bodyguards. And but the places run, the cleaners and the security guards, the concierge, everything else are the kind of people who can't afford to live in anything like that. So you've got those two Londons represented in one, you know, one small space.

Well, including the police, actually, because what you set up immediately in the rise is a normal working person with a normal working wage being confronted with the art and the reception area and the 24-hour spa of the super rich. It's not just wealthy. It's not just all you've got a nice house. No, that's what I mean,

the proper central London living that very few people actually experiencing their life. It came about because I had read a few things. and newspapers and then I start to read a few books about the super wealthy, about dark money, about oligarchs hiding their money away and shakes, you know, Middle Eastern people who hide their money away in London buying property, never living in it, or people living there who didn't want to live there, like say a Saudi princess, for example, and you've got your Chinese high-tech billionaires and you've got this, that, and the other. I just thought it's a really

interesting constituency to write and they often like to keep their secret secret and if there's been a murder or a suspicious death in one of these buildings a lot of people are not going to want it to be made public so the police are under pressure because for example in this story the foreign office are saying hang on a minute we're trying to do a trade deal at the moment with the Middle East

you better tread very carefully with the Middle Eastern Princess and the oligarchs and the Chinese billionaires the foreign officers have gone we don't want to have them suddenly leave the country and take their money elsewhere, we need it here. So there's all kinds of tensions there from the get-go. And I just thought that was absolutely fascinating. I haven't read a lot of non-fiction books about dark money and money laundering

and how people hide their money away in London. Oliver Bullock is a case in point. I read a couple of his books and they were fantastic. Butler to the World. I think I interviewed him in Edinburgh at the Book Festival about it last year. I just thought I would love to write about that. I've not seen that in fiction yet. No, but it's something that people are so upset about in London,

because obviously what you have is a huge spectrum of an economy and then empty space when there are so many people who don't have permanent housing or don't have any access to housing at all. When they opened the big Battersea house station, and the flats were selling straight away to people who weren't going to be resident, they were going to keep their motorbikes there, those kind of things. Everything from upstairs, downstairs through the Dickens, has shown those two worlds colliding

or not quite colliding. You know, the overground and the underground, the underground, the halves and the half-knots. And it's true in Edinburgh. I mean, Edinburgh, you've got the new town and the old town, and the new town when it was constructed, was constructed for the super wealthy. Who could afford to get away from the dirt

and deprivation of the old town, which was becoming unsanitary and overcrowded. And so you got the two Edinburghs. You got the Edinburgh of the Enlightenment, which was a new town where Robert Louis Stevenson grew up, and then you had the old town, which was impoverished and dangerous. where he wanted to go

Stevenson as a young man would go and consort with vagabonds and prostitutes and drunks and all the rest of it so you got that kind of world of what became Jekyll and Hyde of a kind of rational posh man who suddenly decides to let his more venal self emerge

and you get it a lot in Victorian society where you'd have people going to the asylum to just look at people who were trapped in there because that was fun and entertainment for them And you had, you know, the rich men buying girls and young women for their own pleasure and tossing them aside when we were finished with them. And that, to an extent that, of course, that's still going on,

and does it get talked about and does get written about it. But I just thought, this one glass building with only a few people inside it allows me to explore that theme. We should say for our regular listeners, we're doing our utmost not to do any spoilers. No, because you have to download it. You have to download it and read it. And I think it is one of those books where... Spoilers matter. Do you know what I mean? You know, we've done other books where it's like, oh, everyone knows this story.

With some books, people aren't reading it for the plot. Yes, exactly. But with a detective thriller, yes, you are. It's part of it. It's one of the things that annoys me about detective stories, actually. Really? I did one Rebus novel, and it was a question of blood, where I said at the beginning, right, this is what happened, this is who did it? Like a true grumpy writer.

I just thought, and for me, the only thing to be revealed was why? Why did this happen? It was a school shooting. and the person who did the shooting killed themselves afterwards. And so what I was interested in was the why. But of course, as I began to write the novel, and I always said, no, that's not the killer.

Oh, yeah. You thought you were doing a very simple story, giving it all the way at the beginning, but you were not giving it away at the beginning. I've got a much darker story to tell you, said the novel. Have you always loved that genre? No, you know what? I remember the only crime writer I know

who wasn't a fan of crime fiction before they started writing it. I watch stuff on TV. I watch Colombo. I watched Cojack. I watched The Sweeney, whatever. But I didn't read detective fiction. I think I read an interview saying that your first novels you didn't consider crime fiction.

Well, the very first one, the first Rebus novel, I thought, was an updated version of Jekyll and Hyde. I just thought, but instead of making him a doctor, I'll make him a cop, and you're supposed to suspect that he may have committed the crimes because he's having blackouts and he can't remember things he did the previous day,

etc., etc. Thinking that was only ever going to write one. in book with this guy as a central character. And the book said, no. Tons of backstory. I mean, my, there's so much. And oh, no, and now you can, you've got to remember, oh, he's afraid of flying because that was in book one. And there's a daughter, that's in book one.

He's ex-wife in book one. You've got to remember all of that, which is really frustrating. And also I made him 40 years old, which was another thing that came to haunt me. He should have made him younger, yeah, a lot younger. Because eventually he had to retire, and now he's long retired. And he's finding it really hard to get involved in any detective work. at all as an OAP. But yeah, I became a fan very quickly because when the first book was published, A, it was

reviewed as a crime novel, if it was reviewed at all, B, I got a letter from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain saying, oh, you've written a crime novel, you should join us, join us. Do you have to pay to join? Yeah. It wasn't very much, though. And it was tax deductible. Oh, okay. So it was just like a little sub-st thing.

But also I started going into bookshops, and there was my book, not in the Scottish literature section in Edinburgh, but in the crime section next to Ruth Rendell. I thought, well, I better reader then. Yeah, yeah. So I started reading Ruth Rendell and P.D. James and Colin Dexter and Reginald Hill and got into the Americans. They were all called James, James Hall, James Lee Burke, James Elroy, James Salas. And I just loved it and Patricia Highsmith came along. Because there's a lot of very literary writers writing, thrilling, page-turning books.

I know there are also people who can write, you know, shallower books, you know, give them to charity shop afterwards. Plenty my books and charity shops, Sarah. My son works in one he tells me. He doesn't. Does he send you a picture? He sends me pictures. Look how many of your books we've got. You should come and sign them.

Then they can put them in the window. Charge more. You know what? The signed ones are less rare than you unsigned ones. Well, that's something about an e-book because you'll never be asked to sign it. Ah, but you know what? For years now, at signings,

you get the occasional person who comes in with her Kindle or whatever and gets you to sign the cover with a Sharpie. Well, that's because you're big time. Yeah. I think that's big time, right? I've got a Kind of right in front of me. It's quite hard to see. signs, it's already black.

No, but the cover. To silver sharpie? Or you take the, just the back, the back of the physical back of the Kindle, you sign with a silver or a white sharpie. I haven't thought of that enough. You collect signatures. You collect lots of signatures on it. And then when you filled it up, you have to buy another Kindle, I guess. One woman used to come in, where was it? It was Hatchards in London, I think I would do a sign.

And this woman came in with her crash helmet. And she would get her crash helmet signed by all her favourite writers. So she could make it, and she wore it. And so it got faded and she would come back in a few years later and get you to re-sign it going over your old signature. Okay. But if anything happens to her, the first thing is pleased to go, well, that's helmet signed by Ian Ricking. Tell me the strangest one, though. I did sign a book for a woman once,

and then a few years later she said, do you remember signing a book for me? I went, not really. She said, well, look, and she turned around and pulled down the back of her t-shirt, and she had my signature tattooed on the back of her neck. Oh, no, Ian. I worked in a terrible pub in North London, and a man had Jeremy Beedle's face tattooed on his calf muscle. I thought that was a myth. Oh no, I've seen that.

Okay, cool. That's great. Okay. It's Tottenham Hotspur on the other side. The other cough. Jeremy Biedel, I think, I think that's funnier. I want the tattooists to say. It's not right.

Maybe just buy another book. Maybe just go to the library. Have you ever thought about Hena? Yes, yeah, Hennah, lovely. Next year, the Edinburgh Book Festival is doing temporary tattoos of all of the author's signatures. No, this will go out and there'll be a queue of women with your signature on their bags. No, don't. Ready to show you.

each one bigger than the last. Ian, if you had to get an author tattooed on yourself, who would it be, and why? Yeah, I would get Muriel Spark. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's my favourite author. I would definitely get it. And I've got a lot of books by her signed. I keep buying them at auction when they come up for sale.

And I did meet her once at the Edinburgh Book Festival, not long before she died, and got her to sign my copy of the Prime of Miss Jean Brody. Wow. So I might get that tattooed. Yes. But I wouldn't because I hate needles. Oh, okay.

No, that shouldn't be the only reason. No, but I do. I could be able to getting a tattoo. People in middle age do often get to twos for some bizarre reason. Because they just want to feel something. I'm middle age, I can say that. You can tell me. I can say that.

That's what happens. Well, they call it like the experience bumps. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have the experience bump of adolescence and the first. And I think you have that again in early adulthood, whether that's relationships or having children or, you know, traveling. And there's middle age. It's done it.

You've got to make your own bumps. Yeah. And that's tattoos. I luckily got someone, there was a press photographer at this thing where I met Muriel Spark and you got a picture of me and I've never seen me looking as cheesily happy. It's like fanboying, big time fanboying. That's nice when you see that though because I think it's a good reminder. I'd have been in my 40s then as well.

But it's a good mind of why you do what you do, right? That you were a reader once and someone enthralled you with a story and that's why you now do that to other people. I think I don't get starry about anyone apart from authors. Oh yes, yeah. Because it's such an intimate relationship, you know, even though you don't know them. Yeah.

Quite often you know their characters. They have been with you so intimately in your life, whether that's an audio book or reading. We met at Edinburgh Festival once. Zadie Smith's brother is a comic. And so she, like, came to a comedian's bar and was smoking outside. And it's the kind of fanship where you can't, I would never be like that about a comic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've like, oh, you know, yeah, you did a good show. But it's like, Sadie Smith. Yeah, it's too much. Yeah. It's too much. Did you speak to her? I got her name tattooed or.

my book. What happens if you meet them and you don't like them, though? Yeah, that is it. That's basically what it's like to work. Then you're not a fan anymore. But also that's what it's like to work in comedy. Most comedians are very unlikable. Yeah, you do stop watching. It's not happening to me. But one time I was in London, in fact, I was doing Desert Island discs. It was a long time ago. And I was in a restaurant. I could hear this noisy conversation outside. And when I left a restaurant, John Martin, the musician was sitting there with a friend going through the third or fourth bottle of wine. Wow. And he was going to be my number one.

one record. The record that if I only had one, it's Solitaire by John Martin. I love that album. And I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't. I just thought, which John Martin will I get? Yes. When I get nice, fluffy John Martin or, you know, horribly tempered John Martin. Yeah. So I didn't. And it was my one and only chance to meet one of my heroes. I think sometimes that's a good thing. Because I do think having met some people that I really did love and then seeing their very flawed humanity, which is, of course, of course they are their people. And then it's, it does make you go, oh God, in my head, this meant so much and I loved your work and this.

I think sometimes, especially with John Martin, to be able to still listen to that album and not where you're like, that man was really rude to me in a restaurant. But I think what's hard, you meet someone who means a great deal to you and they have never met you before, and they are a normal human being

with normal human beings, bad moods, insecurities, it's so hard for someone to say to you, you mean so much to me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're so fantastic. And there is no gracious, or it's very difficult to graciously take that information

Yeah, yeah. And then continue a normal level conversation or what it is. Does it happen a lot, sir? Earlier on I was did. Have you enjoyed this analysis? Yes. It feels like so. Times up.

A lot of time. People are saying how amazing. Earlier on I met Jason Donovan. You did meet Jason Donovan today. And I wanted to say to him, you know, the first theatre I ever saw, I was taking on a school trip to see Joseph. I close my eyes. It's just really clear.

You know, he's on a radio show. He's promoting. He's so bored of people saying, in the 80s. You were very important. to me or because it's about me, not about him. Yeah. So you just... I think you could have said it to Jason Donovan.

As long as you'd never reveal the tattoo you've got in his face. I was wondering about worthiness of victim. I was wondering, you need a reader to care a little bit about them, but not be too upset. Is that true? Sometimes do you want them to be really up? Isn't that when the writer really sticks the knife in? They're like, is the person you love the most? Well, that could happen sort of later on.

Yeah, true. I've certainly put people in my books that I haven't, that I didn't like in real life and just disguised them slightly. I'm not sure I've bumped them off, but I've made them unlikable people in my books, changing their name slightly or changing their background slightly. Yeah, because you get to sort of enjoy the things you don't like about in real life. It's cathartic. I mean, all writing is cathartic to a certain extent, but that's really getting rid of your demons. The victim is an interesting one because, you know, I think crime used to get accused of having the dead woman on the slab.

and the dead body was just a means of starting the engine of the plot and you didn't really pay much attention to who they were or why they were killed you just wanted to focus on the investigation and the detectives these maverick detectives or detectives with complex issues and problems but also by being usually a white attractive woman we just ticks a few boxes yep society values her we understand why it's being investigated but that's all that's important about them yeah and I think crime writers people who write novels

along quite a while ago, I think, thought we need to do more than that. You know, when someone is killed, then that upsets the whole fabric of their universe, their family, the friends, their workmates, everything else. It is not going to go back to normal. The end of an Agatha Christie type story, everything's been shaken up. But a nice, rational, middle-class person who's usually not a police detective, has solved it, and then everything can go back to normal again. And things just do not go back to normal,

even if you find out who the killer is and you put them in jail, things do not go back to normal. Something irreplaceable has been taken from the world. Yeah, and you now live in a world not only where people can die suddenly. Sorry, I'm pointing at you because you work in grief. I do a lot of stuff about grief. And people can kill each other. And you might know a murderer.

Or, I mean, the most exciting, you could even be one under the bright circumstances. The most exciting, this is someone who really loves crime fiction. I'm terrified. I'm terrified. The most exciting thing is I could be the murderer. The most exciting thing about a criminal is someone regular. They aren't monsters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely you and me under either economic pressures or sudden emotional bursts.

And that's always been the crux of it is you have to believe that why that person did that thing. Yeah. It's amazing how much crime fiction comes back to basically the seven deadly sins. You know, why do people, and not just crime fiction, but crime fact, you know, greed and jealousy and envy and everything else and rage and stuff. I mean, I've interviewed quite a few murderers in my time in going into, prisons to do visits and things in creative writing classes. And a lot of them say the red misdescended. It was like I was out of my body watching someone else do this thing,

which, I mean, could be a defence mechanism so they can cope with the fact that they are a murderer. But they also might be experiencing trauma at the time because I can't imagine something more traumatic. Being murdered, all right? The second to being murdered must be you've killed someone. I think the victim's family may have other opinions. But it was my fear as a teenager because I hated my sister so much. My fear was that something would happen and I would be holding a knife.

You would snap. And I'd kept dreaming about it and I knew I couldn't deal with prison. And it was my fear. You got through it. You got through it, you're all right. So, therefore, you'd have to plan it really carefully so you got away with it. Exactly. She'd have to fit someone else up for the crimes.

I don't even talk about it. No, don't even joke about that. No, don't even joke about that. I went to see, I was in Greece, not the play, not the musical, but the country. I can see you as Danny. I was in Greece recently on holiday and went to see Oedipus Rex for the first time. Oh, wow.

In an amphitheat called Epidavros. And it was extraordinary because it is the first crime story. Yeah, of course. It's a guy hunting for a killer, but he is the killer. Yeah. And I just thought that's... We all know.

We all know. We already know it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're all going, why is it taking you so long to figure this out, mate? It's a pretty basic thing. Yeah. You know. So what happened to the old king?

Well, he was killed on the road. where three roads meet by a stranger. Hang on a minute, I met a stranger and killed them. Yeah. You mentioned speaking to murderers. I'm very interested in your research. How important is accuracy to you when you're writing about the police and investigations?

It's important-ish. I mean, it's important to the extent that you want to persuade people in these professions that you know what you're talking about. So you don't feel like a fool when they say, no, actually, we wouldn't do that. We wouldn't investigate a crime that way. We wouldn't go trampling over a crime scene

the way your detective does. So you've got to do all of that. But at the same time, it is fiction. And there's got to be room for a little bit of licence. So my maverick detective, Rebus, would never have got away with doing what he does. Never. At no point in a real police force would someone have got away with crossing the line as much as he did

or going off. He operates as a private detective. Yeah. Within the police force. He doesn't operate as a team player. That just wouldn't be possible. Which is why I always refer him as a bit of a dinosaur and his way of policing is no longer viable.

And I mean, the last Rebus novel I did was about dirty cops. And we know from recent experience, certainly in the Metropolitan Police, but also elsewhere, that this has never gone away. This still exists. The cover-ups still go on where possible. Even, you know, you think now, how can you cover stuff up when you've got CCTV and you've got mobile phones and you've got people recording everything and their lives being recorded at every moment? And yet, people think they can still get away with stuff.

Yeah, things disappear. Yeah. And it's a tough time for people who write what are called. writer called police procedurals, right, which is a subgenre. People like me and Michael Connolly and Mark Billingham write police procedurals. But it's a tough time for us because members of the public don't necessarily think of the police as the goodies anymore. Are they on our side? And a lot of the questions that we're now asking in our books are what kind of police do we get? What kind of police do we need and what kind of policing do we

deserve? And that's happening on both sides of Atlantic. Michael Connolly's last couple the books have dealt with Black Lives Matter. And the fact, it cops there have been seen as being, you know, sort of racist and attacking black people willy-nilly. And we've had it here with a met in other ways. So we're up to think really deeply. Yeah, definitely there are cold cases that weren't investigated properly at the time because of who the victim is.

And it is such a sort of an upsetting thing if you thought that the world was goodies and baddies. And the goodies were employed, paid by taxes and working for all of us. And those of us who write books, who write novels, think, We don't want to be thought of as just a PR wing of the police. Yeah. It's interesting. It's like your genre has, like many things, had to kind of look quite hard at itself and redefine it in a way

because maybe when you started it was a much simpler. Oh, The policeman is the good person who comes in and stuff. When I started, it was mostly the British police story was the story of a professional police officer. Yeah. You know, whether it was Wexford or whoever or Morse, it was professional police officers.

And you could trust him. He was like the father figure came in. Dixney. He might have a bit of a drink. Oh, he likes the ladies. Maybe not faithful to. his wife, cracker gambled. Yeah, well, all of that.

But now if you look at the bestseller list and you look at what younger writers are doing at the start of their career, they're doing domestic noir, they're doing kind of twisty thrillers, or they're reinventing the cosy. They can you co-deckney Miss Marple type crime stories being reinvented? Because people still want a safe place where the crime is sold and everything

goes back to normal. They still want the Agatha Christie world to exist, but it is a fantasy. But also within actually all of it, I still think there's a little bit of, not vendetta, justice, but people liked the not playing by the rules so that the actual good could come up. And I guess that's much more of a grey area now. Yeah, because it's funny because the Maverick cop that goes outside of the rules to make sure good survives also is very close to the Maverick cop that covers up his own crimes and deletes WhatsApp messages.

Yeah, it's being bribed. Yeah, it's like it's the same character trait of like the rules don't apply to me, which when we were growing up was definitely like, oh, that means you're cool, you know, the Han Solo vibe of crime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. of crime. If you remember the show Life on Mars, I'm sure the creators of that show thought that all the audience

were going to empathise mostly with the young, touchy-feely, liberal modern-day cop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they would see the older cop from the 70s as being outmoded and just a bad... No, we loved... Gene Hunt.

Yeah. We didn't want Sam Tyler. We got more Gene Hunt. So when Series 2 came along... We all have Daddy issues, that's what this is about. Yeah, when season two came along there, Gene Hunt was still there, Sam Tyler was gone.

Because of wanting the maverick, we like the, we like the, kind of slightly dangerous, charismatic character. It's such a narrative. It's such a cowboy narrative. Like, you know, it's so ingrained in us as a story of like, you know, lone man comes into town, sort stuff out. Also, but broken man is quite often. Yeah, something wrong with him. The reader doesn't want to read about a happy man, clocking off at six o'clock. No, we want it.

There's pain in his heart, which is what drives him to make these decisions. Perhaps we also, maybe you could speak to this Ian, but perhaps we also assume that if you were around crime and heartbreak and tragedy for a length of time, how could you be functioning healthfully? It's certainly true. When I started in this game in the early mid-80s, I was talking to cops. They all drank in the same pub as me in Edinburgh,

which was a bonus, a blessing. And it was, yeah, as you say, there was a lot of heavy drinking, there was a lot of busted marriages, there was a lot of agro going on in their lives. They were dealing with a lot of issues or not dealing with them, blanking them out through heavy drinking,

etc, etc. And I think that culture has changed a lot. I think it still goes on to a certain extent, but that culture has changed a lot. And now cops can have happy marriages and they can go home and have a family life and see their kids and everything else. And they've got help.

They've got therapy if and when needed when they go to a terrible situation. They can talk to someone about it. Because you couldn't, in the early days, you just went to a rape or a murder, suicide or whatever, then you had to go home at your family for dinner and you couldn't talk to them about it. So you tended to stay away

from your family, stay in the pub with your workmates and talk about it there. Gallo's humour as well. Gallo's humour is a form of not coping. Oh yeah. Processing what actually has happened. So of course you say awful things or and I know that's still happening now but that is someone who's not processing.

Yeah, I mean it's interesting isn't it? Because it's why police procedural books or crime fiction is popular because it's such a microcosm of masculinity. of like facing really horrible things, finding it difficult to talk about them, and the damage that does. And obviously that's a lot of,

you know, either you're reading that, you are a man, you relate to it, or you live with someone like that. That was your dad or your brother or your husband. And so we can all relate to that broken man narrative.

Yeah. But you know what? I mean, a lot of the great writers in the genre have been women and a lot of the great characters have been women. Yes, true. I'm being very...

I was going to say, but maybe sometimes it's because they're slightly more complex. Because women, in general. women crime writers certainly much more psychologically complex than the male crime writers I'll find and the and the theme yeah but you read a lot more crime than I do do do you think that's fair I love it I don't I would never look at a gender of a crime writer you just ignore it you tape over the label I wouldn't go well that's a woman that'll be more for me or that's a man you probably you probably know this that PD James used the letters PD so that people wouldn't know she was a

woman because she thought it would put some people off buying her books yeah yeah yeah when I started writing poetry, I was Ian J. Rankin. I use my middle initial and I was like sometimes IJ. Rankin. I J. Rankin. But Ian Rankin, or in Greek, Ian Pankin, as I found when I went into a bookshop in Greece. Because the P's, they are in Greek. Yeah, Ian Pankin. Ian Pankin. Ian Pankin is not a crime. He's like, was he a cookery writer? What is he do? I think he works in kids telly. Ian Pankin. Hello, Ian. What are you going to tell us about? Well, there's been this murder. No, Ian, no. We are coming to the end of our time with you.

I don't have a last line because everything's a spoiler. I think we've done really well not to spoil anything. I know why wanted to ask. Obviously, it's a contained short story, but do you envision more of this detective, or do you envision more short stories? What have you signed on to? I've signed up for nothing.

The next book I write will be a Rebus novel. That will start that towards the end of this year. I love the character. I think Gillian Gish is a great character. And the thing about the length of this was that it made me have to think about it almost like a poet and think, I've got to do this in the shortest possible number of words.

So there's one character who we barely see a cop in the police station and somebody says, why should always chewing gum? Well, because when she doesn't chew gum, she's on 40 a day. That's pretty much all you need to know. That's what you get, but that tells you quite a lot about the character.

Yeah, yeah. And also the job. It's the kind of thing that drives you to, you know, heavily smoke. Well, it's available to download now. It's brilliant. I absolutely loved it. We've downloaded it for you like Coldplay did it.

Check your iPad. It's there. Check your Kindle. It's already there. It's called The Rise and it's absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I think it was you too. It wasn't Coldplay, was it. It was you two. I'm sorry, Colplay. Coltley would never do that. It was you two and you couldn't delete it. Every new Kindle will come with this story. That was part of Ian insisted on that in the deal.

And if you listen carefully, Ian Pankin is singing the song to the novel. You could download that on iTunes probably. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. You can find Ian on Instagram at Ian Rankin too. The Rise is available to buy now. Next week's book guest is Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingle. My book Weirdo is available, as is Carriad's book.

You are not alone. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.