Free Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus by Craig Cabell

necessarily people who had helped with technical knowledge that directly benefited the story. For example, Professor J [Jon] Curt. Curt was a fellow postgraduate student with whom Rankin spent a ‘boozy’ year when he was finishing his MA. He wasalso part-time barman at the Oxford Bar and Rankin credits him for putting him in touch with the place – so much so that he rewarded him by turning him into Rebus’s friend Dr Curt, the pathologist in the series.
    When Wolfman was due for US release, Rankin’s American publisher wanted to change the title. Wolfman was so obviously a horror title. Rankin explained that Wolfman was the name of theserial killer in the story but that didn’t cut too much ice. However, when his American publisher suggested the title Tooth and Nail , Rankin saw the merits. ‘The title seemed resonant, and chimed with my first two Rebus novels,’ he would write in the special introduction to the book’s 2007 re-issue.
    A couple of months after the release of Wolfman , Rankin received a photo from friends in Tottenhamshowing the gloomy real-life subway where the first murder in the novel takes place. On the white tiled wall, somebody had written ‘Wolfman’ in six-foot letters. Rankin has kept the photograph, probably to remind him that when fiction provokes real-life imagery, strange people turn elements of that fiction into indelible fact.

    ‘The Wolfman had taken a risk this time, however, striking in lateevening instead of at the dead of night. Someone might have seen him. The need for a rapid escape might have led him to leave a clue. Please, God, let him have left a clue.’
    Tooth and Nail

    It seems that at the time of writing Tooth and Nail Rankin was content to make Rebus a series. He had enjoyed writing about the character, and people wanted to know what this maverick would get up to next.

    Although there were parallels between character and creator, Rankin would state that Rebus was like the older brother he never had – although Rebus never gave him advice like an older brother would! When one learns that Rankin actually had a brother who died before he was born, one could immediately interpret the Fifer Rebus in elder brother mode, but Rankin remains unconvinced on this point.

CHAPTER SEVEN
STRIP JACK NAKED
    ‘He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.’
    George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara
    R ankin was enjoying himself and everything was going well, but with the Rebus series destined to continue, he believed that any non-Rebus novel should come out under a pseudonym, because his audience would be disappointed if Rebusdidn’t appear in it. This was no idle threat. Rankin did write three thrillers under the name Jack Harvey (his son’s first name and his wife’s maiden name) and those would be published by Headline. In fact, the pseudonym was so obscure in comparison to Rankin’s mainstream work that when I called Hodder/Headline for details concerning sales figures for these ‘Ian Rankin’ books, the publisher sworeblind that they had never worked with the author. 41

    ‘The fan had been installed and turned on, and an hour or so later Doctor Curt provided the shit to toss at it.’
    Strip Jack

    Although Rankin has always considered his Rebus books to be ‘whodunits’or ‘crime novels’he has always said that they are also very funny books and that they made him laugh. Although there are macabre incidents inthe books, there is always an opportunity for humour, if not in the narrator’s banter (see above quote) then within the story itself and brought about by the characters themselves.
    Part of the reality of the Police Force – or even the Armed Forces – is that extreme circumstances need a release valve. There will be natural banter between good friends – and not so good friends! – and no one, withthe possible exception of superior officers, can be serious all the time. Indeed, the irrepressible Dr Curt