Steve Aldous
asked
Ian Rankin:
Ian, I love the Rebus books and noticed in a few interviews that you cited Ernest Tidyman's Shaft novels as an influence. I, like you read them in my teens when they were first published in the UK by Corgi in the 1970s, and they have stayed with me ever since - so much so I wrote a book about them. Where there any specific aspects of Tidyman's writing that you admired and carried across into your own work?
Ian Rankin
When I was 11 or 12 I got interested in films but a lot of them I wasn't old enough to see at the cinema. You had to be 18 to watch Shaft, The Godfather, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Dirty Dozen, MASH, Clockwork Orange etc. And yet, nobody told me I couldn't read those books. So books became potent objects to me. The thrill of the illicit and the adult. Shaft was part of it. They were the first PI novels I encountered.
More Answered Questions
Michelle O'Brien
asked
Ian Rankin:
In “Let it Bleed” Rebus is talking in the North British, Edinburgh, with a US diplomat, Haldayne. Haldayne tells Rebus re something Rebus has just said; “That's hardly fair, is it? Hardly British." To which Rebus replies: "You're not in Britain now, Mr. Haldayne.” Is Rebus technically correct? Is Scotland not ranked part of Britain?
A Goodreads user
asked
Ian Rankin:
Which book or piece of work would you consider to be your magnum opus?
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