10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (25 page)

Are the skills of journalist Jim Stevens mirrored by those of Rebus? Do the two men respect the similarities between them? And what do they each feel about drawing close to the ‘big fish’? Does the act of reading a crime story put the reader in a similar role to that of either detective or investigative journalist and, if so, in what way?

What contrasts does Jim Stevens make between ‘old-fashioned’ crime, such as the ‘families’ of 1950s Glasgow gangsters, and the ‘new’ crime wave, such as drug-dealing? And which does he favour?

What do you make of Rebus’s behaviour towards the woman he picks up at the Rio Grande Bingo Hall?

‘
Was nothing arbitrary in this life?
’
Rebus wonders
. ‘
No, nothing at all. Behind the seemingly irrational lay the clear golden path of the design
.’ Consider how even in his debut novel Ian Rankin explores this notion.

Are there any signs remaining that Ian Rankin toyed with the idea of killing Rebus off at the end of
Knots & Crosses
?

If Ian Rankin had envisaged
Knots & Crosses
to be the opener for the lengthy and detailed series the Rebus books were to become, how could he have allowed his plotting to draw to a close in a more open-ended manner? And might this have made the narrative stronger ultimately?

Title

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

April 2005

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Discussion Points

‘My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring.’

A year or two after
Hide & Seek
was published, there was a break-in at Edinburgh’s police headquarters. Among the items rumoured to have been stolen was a list of names of men prominent in Edinburgh society. Allegations had been made that these men had been using rent boys, leaving themselves open to blackmail, and a police inquiry had been instituted. There were enough similarities between the real-life case and aspects of my novel that people would stop me in the street to ask how I’d known so much so soon. I would explain that my sources had to be protected.

There were no sources, of course: I’d made the story up.

I saw
Hide & Seek
very much as a companion piece to
Knots & Crosses
. Reviewers had failed to pick up on the earlier book’s use of Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
as a template. I was determined to try once more to drag Stevenson’s story back to its natural home of Edinburgh, and to update the theme for a modern-day audience. In fact, the book’s eventual working title was
Hyde & Seek
, but only after I’d ditched
Dead Beat
(at the behest of my agent, to whom the book was eventually dedicated). The final version of
Hide & Seek
opens with a quote from
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
and goes on to use quotes from Stevenson’s book at the start of each section. Moreover, I lifted many of the character names directly from Stevenson’s masterpiece – Enfield, Poole, Carew, Lanyon – while
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
provides Detective
Inspector Rebus with his night-time reading, when he’s not busy mulling over his latest case.

Not that I was keen for readers to get the connection or anything . . .

Between
Knots & Crosses
and the events of
Hide & Seek
, Rebus has been promoted from detective sergeant – his one and only promotion in the series so far. Other changes have taken place. Rebus has a new sidekick called Brian Holmes (a none-too-subtle nod to another Edinburgh writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). And Edinburgh is changing, too, as new money moves in. The book was written in 1988 and 1989. By then, I was living in London, at the height of Thatcherism. Red braces and Moët were all the rage. In some wine bars, rising property values seemed to be the only currency of conversation. I’d been in London for a couple of years and was not making much of a go of it. My wife and I lived in a maisonette in Tottenham, and having failed to find full-time writing a lucrative enough proposition, I was working as a magazine journalist in Crystal Palace, entailing a three-hour commute each weekday. I seemed to be surrounded by people more successful than me, people with fat salaries or five-figure publishing deals. My situation at the time seems to me now to explain the bitter edge to much of the writing in
Hide & Seek
, and is reflected in Brian Holmes’s memories of his few student months in London (‘a season spent in hell’, as he himself remembers it).

The novel did not come hard on the heels of
Knots & Crosses
: there had been two other novels in between. One was a spy adventure,
Watchman
; the other,
Westwind
, my attempt at a techno-thriller. The latter, however, was struggling to find a publisher of any kind, while the former had sold a scant 500 copies in hardcover.
Hide &
Seek
was actually begun in the summer of 1988, but failed to make much headway. My job got in the way, as did attempts to turn my first novel,
The Flood
, into a useable screenplay, and various frustrating efforts to get work as a script-writer on
The Bill
. I was also reviewing books most weeks for a new broadsheet called
Scotland on Sunday
.

One other reason why I may have held back on a second Rebus novel: plans had been afoot to film the first one, with Leslie Grantham (Dirty Den in
EastEnders
) as Rebus. This plan eventually fell through in January 1989. My guess had been that Grantham would want the action of
Knots & Crosses
relocated to London. Now that he would not be taking Rebus to the screen, I felt free to write a second Edinburgh-based adventure for my character. The final draft of the book was completed in May.

It’s a less overwrought work than its predecessor, the prose leaner, though the Rebus we meet is still not the fully formed character of later books. For one thing, he’s still too well-read, quoting from Walt Whitman – someone I’d studied at university but of whom Rebus couldn’t really be expected to have had knowledge. He also quotes from the Romantic poets, and listens to Radio Three in his car. On his hi-fi at home, there’s jazz, but also the Beatles’
White Album
(I’d soon have him preferring the Stones). My own time as a hi-fi journalist is reflected in the expensive Linn turntable owned by one character, while a scene inside the library at the University of Edinburgh takes Holmes to the fifth floor, which I’d haunted during my three years as a postgraduate student.

There are other literary references in the book: to James Hogg’s
Confessions of a Justified Sinner
, and to the poet George MacBeth, who had shared a writers’ retreat with me a couple of years before. A character from
The Flood
pops up in the first few pages, and Rebus and Holmes also visit west-central Fife where both the Inspector and I grew up. It’s noticeable to me now that Rebus in particular is not as cynical about his old hunting-ground as he was when paying his respects in
Knots & Crosses
. Maybe enough of my spleen had been vented. London was the enemy now; London, and the harsh materialism I seemed to have found there.

Besides, I had many happy memories of my childhood, memories rekindled by the death of my father in February 1990, while I was in the midst of proofreading
Hide & Seek
. By the time the book was ready for publication, Miranda and I had decidedly had enough of London and Mrs Thatcher. We were making plans to live in France, praying that my writing would start earning enough to turn the dream into a reality. And once we’d left Tottenham behind, I’d be able to put some of my own feelings about the capital into words, by taking John Rebus to London on a case.

A case that would become
Tooth & Nail
.

‘Hide!’

He was shrieking now, frantic, his face drained of all colour. She was at the top of the stairs, and he stumbled towards her, grabbing her by the arms, propelling her downstairs with unfocussed force, so that she feared they would both fall. She cried out.