On the crime scene

The real world may be filled with unreal and mad coincidences,but fiction has to be realistic, reflects Ian Rankin,best-selling author of crime novels.

Written by Parul

January 23, 2010 01:43 AM IST

4 min read

Crime writing happened to Ian Rankin by accident

The real world may be filled with unreal and mad coincidences,but fiction has to be realistic, reflects Ian Rankin,best-selling author of crime novels. Knots and Crosses,the first of his famous and hit Inspector Rebus novels,Black and Blue,Resurrection men,Fleshmarket Close,Set in Darkness,The Naming of the Dead…Ians won numerous awards for his crime writing,though its lyrics and poetry that he first began penning down years back. I had a pretend pop band in my head,and wrote lyrics for this band. Later it was poetry,though all these writings were left in my parental house and dissapeared, Ians first dream of writing a comic was realized recently with Dark Entries,a graphic novel. With not many books around him as a child,Ian pored over comics,loving the fulfillment of the adventures in his head in comics,which the writer feels are an excellent way to reach out to the younger audience and encourage them to read. It was a wish of 40 years thats finally fulfilled. Comic is a different way of telling a story,novelists are lazy,they like to let the reader do the work,but in a comic you have to describe in detail to the artist. Its like a film,where you are the director and the artist is a cameraperson and in the time I could have written three novels,I wrote 1,000 pages of notes for the artist, Dark Entries is a series of crime-related stories,with a big twist in the middle!

As for crime novels,Ian admits hes an accidental crime writer and it all began while he was writing short stories and made them too long,and so was born his first novel,The Flood,which wasnt a crime novel. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was playing on Ians mind,but something contemporary was what he wanted to write. Crime novels in my opinion are a good way to talk about todays society and bring to fore social-political issues with the thrill and excitement packed in. I wanted the main guy to be a cop,for its a cop who gets closest to the crime and is never denied information, recalls Ian,who was at that time studying Scottish Literature. And so was born Inspector Rebus and Edinburgh,where Ian lives,was the place where all the action took place!

Meeting a lot of police officers,landing up at a police station to get information on the working of the staff and cases,Ian recalls how the plot of his book was similar to a case of a missing person registered at this police station,I became a suspect and thereafter a lot of stories came to me, Ian says the plot of his crime novels got very political and social,be it the governments policy on asylum seekers (Fleshmarket Close),G8 Summit,the banking crisis (The Complaints,his latest)…After you have children,theres a shift. You begin to think of the world youre going to leave behind for them and then these issues become important, Ian feels crime fiction has many takers in the Capitalistic society,where there are many have and have-nots. With his books being translated into about 22 languages,many television series on his novels,Ian agrees crime has a huge market,and in India,its waiting to be explored. Whats your crime?

Ian is here as part of Lit Sutra,a programme of cultural relations through reading and writing,building on the success of the British Councils festival of Indian writing at London Book Fair 2009 and had an interactive session with readers at Taj Chandigarh.

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On the crime scene

The real world may be filled with unreal and mad coincidences,but fiction has to be realistic, reflects Ian Rankin,best-selling author of crime novels.

The real world may be filled with unreal and mad coincidences,but fiction has to be realistic, reflects Ian Rankin,best-selling author of crime novels.