Free Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus by Craig Cabell Page A

is a zany as the manic Professor Professor from the children’s cartoon The Secret Show : he’s always finding his own jokes funny while others fail to see the humour, and he always delivers an important fact.

    ‘Rebus didn’t mind being the butt. He knew the way it was. In a murder inquiry,you worked as a team. Lauderdale, as team manager, had the job of boosting morale, keeping things lively. Rebus wasn’t part of the team, not exactly, so he was open to the occasional low tackle with studs showing.’
    Mortal Causes

    A lot of the humour in the Rebus series comes at the good inspector’s expense. His inability to have a proper date with a woman without things going pear-shaped (i.e.he is late, has been involved in a skirmish, decided to keep whatever peace offering he has bought to make up for the last disaster), adds a distinct injection of black humour to proceedings. Also, Rankin has a private joke with the real Police Force, because when it is time for Rebus to buckle down and do things in a methodical manner – i.e. follow police procedure to the letter – Rankin ignoresthe whole thing and says, ‘Rebus wouldn’t do it that way, he’s a maverick.’ Therefore he cuts out all the tedious procedure and red tape that would give stark, boring realism to the stories, and consequently have his own private chuckle with any reader who knows the slightest thing about police procedure.
    The people who appreciated Rankin’s dark humour from the off were his new publishers Orion.In the summer of 1992 they released a numbered, limited edition proof of his first Rebus novel for them – Strip Jack . High up on the back of the paperback they wrote: ‘Memo to Chief Inspector Morse and Wexford. You have a new rival from north of the border. His name is Rebus, his manor Edinburgh. And he’s found a writer as good as yours. Watch him.’
    Tongue-in-cheek banter it may have been butit did send a message out to the reviewers who were keen to tar Rebus with the same brush as his rivals. Orion got the mind-set right for Rankin/Rebus early on and that probably explains why the relationship has been a strong one over the past two decades. Rankin echoes this: ‘Orion was a brand new publishing house. The attitude was very gung-ho and there were lots of good new ideas being tossedaround. To prise me away from Random Century they had doubled my advance (to 10k I think, but that may have been for two books). I’d already moved from Polygon to Bodley Head to Barrie & Jenkins to Century… If I didn’t start selling, I knew I’d be on borrowed time! Of course, I’m still with Orion, so obviously we work well together – but that’s the best outcome for a writer. There are people aroundme 42 who’ve become friends and confidants.
    Strip Jack wasn’t to be Rankin’s breakthrough novel, however. In fact, it is one of the rarest Rebus titles in first edition hardback. The book sold moderately well but mainly through trade paperback. It is a fact that sales concerned Rankin at the time, as he clarified to me: ‘It was my first book for Orion, and I wanted to do well for my new employers!I was living in France and had become the family’s only breadwinner. Our son Jack had come along, so I had to earn a living. I couldn’t piss about. I was a worried man when I wrote Strip Jack .’
    The title of the book came from the card game Strip Jack Naked (to keep within the game-playing theme of the first two book titles in the series), but Rankin decided that the title Strip Jack was morepunchy. The title didn’t come about because of the birth of his first son, Jack, although he became the subject of the dedication; his name had already been decided and the whole thing was a coincidence.

    ‘“You’re sure it was a hire car?” Watson asked
    Holmes. Holmes thought again before nodding.’
    Strip Jack

    Of course the homage to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson is there if you want it, andthe irony is that Watson is the boss and Holmes