'I don't know if I'm going to write about Rebus again'

Author Ian Rankin outside the Oxford Bar. Picture: Ian Georgeson

“That’s Rebus’s seat there.” Ian Rankin nods at the table next to us, two paces away on the other side of the window in the back room of Edinburgh’s Oxford Bar. We both stare at the empty pew.

Absent yet ever present, former Detective Inspector John Rebus has been drinking in “The Ox” for 30 years, the same length of time Rankin has been writing about him.

Tucked away on a cobbled lane in Edinburgh’s New Town with its net curtains over opaque glass windows, calm green walls and dark wood furniture, this is a pub to settle into for a pint and a chat. Discreet yet convivial. It’s old school with no music or snacks on slates to upset the ambience. Regulars sit on stools at the bar while up a few steps in the back room there are tables and chairs for those cops, journalists, office workers, workies and tourists seeking a seat and the conversation ranges from the match to murder under the low murmur of the telly high on its shelf.

Ian Rankin talks to Janet Christie about the latest Rebus novel: Rather be The Devil. Picture: Ian Georgeson

Today it’s warm on a grey Edinburgh day. Snug in the snug.

When I arrive 56-year-old Rankin is sitting alone, opening mail sent to him care of the bar.

Today it’s crime books. “I get a lot of those,” he says, pleased.

His dress is casual, approaching smart: a dark blue Paul Smith shirt, anonymous brown trousers, black trainers and a dark jacket. Familiar as he is, he wouldn’t stand out in a line-up.

Detetctive Rebus has had more than one incarnation on television screens. Ken Stott was the latest actor to play the iconic detective.

“I started drinking here when I was a student because a mate of mine was a barman, just at the time I was starting to write the first Rebus book. A lot of cops drank in here off duty, a lot of politicians, a real mix,” he says. “I’ve always liked it.”

We’re here to talk about his new book, Rather Be The Devil, the 22nd Rebus crime novel, published on 5 November.

One of the country’s best-selling authors, with worldwide sales topping 30 million, he’s best known for Rebus, the series that spawned a TV version.

As well as the Rebus series, Rankin has also written crime fiction starring another of his fictional detectives, Malcolm Fox, other novels under the pen name Jack Harvey, short stories, and a play. And this year he’s been visiting professor at the University of East Anglia’s creative writing course.

“I’ve done one two-hour seminar and told them all I know about crime fiction already, about character, place and my heroes, so what I do for the rest of the year I don’t know.”

For his latest book, once again Rankin has taken a song as his inspiration. This time it’s John Martyn’s I’d Rather Be The Devil, one of the tracks on his Solid Air album.

The last book, Even Dogs in the Wild, was from an Associates song, while Saints of the Shadow Bible, came from a song by his friend, singer songwriter Jackie Leven.

“John Martyn’s Solid Air, when I did Desert Island Discs, was the one song I couldn’t live without.

It was weird because after I’d done the show I was leaving a restaurant and saw John Martyn sitting outside with some mates.

That was my chance to go up and say, ‘Solid Air is my favourite album of all time, I’m down here to do Desert Island Discs and blah, blah, blah’.

But I just bottled it. I couldn’t talk to him. And a couple of years later he was dead, and that was that.

“The title, Rather Be The Devil, is down to the fact that at some point in your life, you will be tempted, or take the wrong road.

How does it feel when you do something naughty, something wrong? Rebus is tempted to go over to the dark side.”

The Flying Pigs

Rankin has always loved music.

In his teenage days he sang in new wave band The Flying Pigs.

Now he listens to instrumental music as he writes – Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Mogwai, Tangerine Dream.

He’s also met a few of his musical heroes. He whips out his mobile and shows me a photo of him with Jimmy Page last week. “Definitely star struck,” he says.

Rankin’s career as vocalist in The Flying Pigs hit the skids when he couldn’t get back to Fife to practice, but he still has his tambourine.

“Well, I had to have something to hold.

It was 1977/78 and we were listening to Joy Division, Japan, probably early Human League, coming out of punk and into new wave. We had some punk songs and some psychedelic.

I’ve got a five track cassette of us that I listened to recently and thought, the singer’s flat but he doesn’t know it.

He had no dress sense either, a Paisley top my aunty knitted me, a short-sleeved red shirt, white Sta-Prest trousers and Ramones hair.”

He might have ditched the outfits, but he kept the can-do mentality of punk. In fact it was the spur to his literary ambitions.

“It was hugely important to me to be that age at that time, because the punk ethos meant you didn’t have to go to the right school, or be able to afford the right instruments, or have musical training.

Punk gave you a kind of chutzpah, so even trying to be a writer, I just thought, well, I’m going to send poems to Radio Times, short stories to the Observer, just have a go.

You got nothing back, but you did it anyway. And at uni people just made music, magazines, films, put on gigs, exhibitions, all sorts. We just went, ‘yeah, what the hell’.”

'I don't know if I'm going to write about Rebus again'

'I don't know if I'm going to write about Rebus again'