Ian Rankin and the Case of the Disappearing Detective imagine...

This programme contains some strong language.

'Where do writers get their ideas?

'This one gets his from a green manilla folder every December.

'Ian Rankin writes one book a year.'

Basically, this pile of what looks like scrap paper,

potentially, is my next book.

The story's in here somewhere.

I'm just looking for it to reveal itself.

Throughout the year, I've just got some ideas.

I've just scribbled them down on any pieces of paper I can.

Clippings from newspapers.

This is a napkin from a hotel. I've scribbled a couple of ideas on it.

I just flick through and see if anything jumps out at me.

"The Church and the NHS working together on exorcism."

"A deaf kid lip-reads something they shouldn't."

A doctor who claimed to have helped save lives on 7/7,

who turned out not to be a doctor at all.

I have my doubts that I can use that. Maybe a short story.

An idea here for a stand-alone...

'Ian Rankin has had at least one good idea a year for 25 years.

'His best-known character is the hard-bitten Edinburgh cop

'John Rebus.

'A leathery maverick who refuses to play by the rules.'

I'm going to have to arrest you for impersonating a human being.

I'm going to ask you once more nicely, OK?

Fuck off!

'17 Rebus books and a popular TV series

'have made Ian Rankin a household name and a millionaire.'

YOU BASTARD!

'Unfortunately, having written the books in real time,

'Rankin was forced to retire Rebus five years ago,

'when the detective hit 60.

'Exit Music saw the brooding anti-hero riding off into the sunset.

'Which leaves Ian Rankin with a bit of a problem.

'What's he going to write about next?'

What's this? A guy going up and down the A9, seeking missing daughter.

"How can a young woman vanish without leaving a single clue?"

Anything to do with cold cases, the reopening of unsolved murders.

Some of these clippings go back 2009 and I haven't found a use for them.

Doesn't mean to say that I won't.

Nothing is ever wasted.

If I'm lucky, I get one good idea a year.

If you're a novelist, one good idea a year is all you need.

'It's the last Saturday before Christmas

'and 200 Rankin fans have queued for an hour to meet him.'

-Hello. Who's Gordon?

-It's my dad.

Hope this isn't all he's getting for Christmas.

-Thank you.

-Take care.

'The small matter of writing a new book will have to wait.

'He's busy promoting the last one.'

Ian Rankin's huge.

For book sales, he's one of the world top 20 authors

that keeps the book trade going.

And keeps us going as a company. He's that important.

Is there a queue still at the door? Oh, Christ!

I think he's got that fan base that you associate with huge writers.

You're going to get huge crowds come to see him.

People are that passionate about his characters and his books.

'Rankin's latest book, The Impossible Dead,

'features his more recent creation, Inspector Malcolm Fox from Internal Affairs.

'Fox couldn't be more different from Rebus.

'Teetotal, whiter than white, he lives and works by the rules.'

Thank you. Bye.

'I do think Malcolm is much more like me as a human being.

'Rebus is much more of a maverick, more of a rule-breaker,

'very negative in his outlook on human nature - none of that pertains to Malcolm.'

'He's a bit of a square, but people seem to be warming to Malcolm Fox.

'In fact, the size of this crowd would suggest he has a very bright future ahead of him.'

Thanks for coming along. Hello.

Thanks for coming along. See ya.

Hello. All right. See ya.

Hiya. All right? See ya.

-Hi there.

-Hey, how you doing?

-OK.

This is my last event of the year, so I can relax now.

And get started on the next book.

I've no idea if you're stable or not.

'Ian has agreed to keep a video diary over the next six months,

'as he writes his new book.'

It's, er... January 2nd, 2012.

On this day in 2011, I actually started writing The Impossible Dead,

my latest novel.

History has not repeated itself,

but I've spent today typing up all my notes for the new book.

So, if I'm in the mood, any day now, I'm going to get started writing.

Hurrah.

It's Sunday 8th January,

and I intend to start writing the new novel tomorrow.

I haven't done much the last few days.

Except get a haircut. I've got 12 pages of notes.

So, filming tomorrow - day one of the writing process.

I'm thinking of just about anything but sitting down and writing that book.

At the back of my head, it's ticking over.

I'm a bit lazy and I don't work best first thing in the morning.

So I need to have had something occupying my time until the evil hour

when I've got to sit at the word processor and start... bashing out the next book.

I read at least one newspaper a day and pretend it's research.

Mostly what I'm doing is Sudoku and crosswords.

Writing is a very solitary thing to do.

You do it yourself in isolation,

and I suppose he really goes into himself.

That can be annoying, until I think, "Ah! It's the build-up to a novel."

Once I realise that that's what's happening, it's fine.

I just get on with life and he is like a teenage student.

Tangerine Dream, Ricochet.

I can listen to that all day.

MUSIC STARTS

Because I've been using these same albums for years,

it tells my brain, "We're now in writing mode."

This is shutting out the real world. You're now in this little bubble.

And you can write away.

Really, you just want to get it kicked off.

You want to get some words down on paper.

Hopefully, more than one page.

"The rain wasn't quite falling yet,

"but it had scheduled an appointment.

"There were people here he knew, but probably not many.

"A gap appeared between two of the mourners

"and he caught a glimpse of the graveside.

"Christ, he needed a cigarette."

Without giving too much away at the moment,

from page one, there's a male of a certain age standing in a cemetery,

er...watching a cop who he knew

being put into the ground, er...

and he's dying for a cigarette.

So, that gives you the clue as to who this character might be, although I've not named him yet.

I'm on to page two. One of the mourners is approaching him and he's just about to be named.

'Ian Rankin is synonymous with Edinburgh.

'They make for an intriguing pair.

'The city with a reputation for hiding its secrets

'and the writer renowned for playing his cards close to his chest.'

So this is week one, Ian, then? The beginning?

The beginning of the writing or the beginning of the first draft.

There's a long road to go.

Can I ask you who is at the heart of this book?

-I take it it isn't Rebus.

-At the moment, it IS Rebus.

-Oh, my God!

-I wasn't planning a comeback quite this soon for him.

I was thinking of bringing him back at some point, but the nature of the theme I wanted to explore,

the nature of the plot, he was the best person for it.

Yesterday, I was at a funeral - and then I started to write it.

It's a guy at a funeral, watching from the back.

He doesn't want to be too close to mortality.

He doesn't want to see the open grave.

Then I had to think, is his voice still in my head?

Do we have some unfinished business?

-ACTOR:

-'"John," he said. "Tommy," Rebus replied.

'"Got to be us one of these days, eh?"

'"Not yet, though."

'The two men started walking towards the cemetery gates.

'Rebus lit up and inhaled.

'"How long have you been out of the game now?" he asked.

'"Twelve years and counting. One of the lucky ones."

'He was holding out his hand.

'Rebus shook it.

'"Till the next time, eh?"

"So long as it's not one of us in the wooden suit."'

This process in which you have certain ideas and connections,

-the fact that you went to a funeral, you clearly don't plan funerals.

-No!

-All those things somehow converging.

-I know.

If you were a spiritual person, you would say there's something up there

that's connecting all these things and bringing the stories to you.

It's as though the stories are up there,

waiting to be channelled to you.

When did you think to yourself, at what point in the last two or three months,

did you decide, "OK, this one's for Rebus"?

It wasn't until day one, when I came back from the cafe

and started to type the scene at the cemetery, when he says,

"That'll be us one of these days, Rebus."

It was then I got a little thrill cos I thought, "Yup. It IS him.

-"It's me and him again."

-I think a lot of other people will get a thrill, too.

-I hope so.

What are people going to say in general about this?

"You've failed with Malcolm Fox.

"You can't write any other books except ones with this character."

I don't know. People might think it's a retrograde step.

I'll be face-to-face with lots of interviewers, reviewers, who'll be saying things like,

"You brought Rebus back. Is that a failing, a mark that your post-Rebus writing wasn't successful?"

Always at the back of my mind I've got Conan Doyle

getting rid of Sherlock Holmes and then bringing him back.

'Ah yes! This isn't the first time an Edinburgh writer

'has resurrected a well-loved sleuth.

'Conan Doyle threw Holmes off a cliff

'and brought him back from the dead.

'His readers were delighted,

'but the author confessed to a nagging guilt about the contrivance.

'It seems Ian is worrying along similar lines.

'How can a writer who prides himself on his realism

'justify Rebus's return?'

He retired at the end of Exit Music.

But in that book it was intimated that what he would do would be to...

apply to join the cold case unit, which exists in Edinburgh.

And which is staffed mostly by retired detectives

who look at old unsolved cases.

The idea I got for the book happened to involve an old unsolved case.

I thought there's no way I can shoehorn Malcolm Fox into this narrative.

It would be a lot easier if Rebus did actually go off and had joined the cold case unit

as a civilian working for the police.

Then this fell into his lap.

'For Rankin, crime fiction is a means of chronicling our times.

'His books have explored contemporary themes

'like sex trafficking, drug dealing and the oil industry.'

I am looking for reality,

for something that I think could happen in the real world.

'So what's on his mind this time?

'Could it be our ageing workforce?'

At one time, if you were a police officer in Scotland, if you were uniform, you retired at 55.

If you were CID, you could work until you were 60.

The reason that Rebus retired was that he would have been 60,

but now he's able to work until he's 67 - or soon will be.

So there's that potential for seven more years of Rebus books.

-ACTOR:

-'The traffic in Edinburgh was, indeed, a nightmare.

'Temporary lights, road closures, diversions.

'Most of it to accommodate a single tram line from the airport to the city centre.

'While stationary, he checked his phone for messages,

'unsurprised to find there were none.

'No urgent cases required his attention.

'He worked with the long-dead,

'murder victims forgotten by the world at large.'

-You haven't yet told us...

-The title?

-..what the title is.

One of the notes I'd made to myself

was from a Jackie Leven song.

The line was "standing in another man's grave", which was the refrain.

I thought that's a really interesting phrase.

I went to find the song and it was a mondegreen.

You know what a mondegreen is, Alan? It's a mishearing.

It comes from an early song, "They slew the bold Sir So-and-So and laid him on the green."

People heard it as "and Lady Mondegreen".

I had misheard the line "standing in another man's rain".

As far as I know, it's called Standing In Another Man's Grave.

Which is great, cos it opens with Rebus at a graveside.

He goes to his car. There's a Jackie Leven CD playing and he mishears the song.

-So he does...

-Exactly what I did. Yes.

'Rankin's real life has a habit of finding its way into his books.

'Although he repeatedly claims that he and Rebus are nothing like one another,

'they share more than just a love of rock music.'

I decided early on in the series

that Rebus would come from the same background as me.

'Rankin and Rebus are not only from the same Fife town,

'they grew up on the same street, Craigmead Terrace.'

My dad was a great storyteller.

We didn't have many books in the house, but he was a wonderful liar!

He had a wee nick in his knee from when he was a kid, he would say it was a bullet wound.

For years, I believed him that it was a bullet wound.

It still stuns me when I think that I make more in a year

than my father made in his working life - he worked for 50 years.

He never earned more than five grand a year.

For a lot of that time, he earned much less.

So 50 years of his earnings wouldn't come to what I earn in a year.

And that's shocking. I sort of wish he was alive to see it.

I don't spend money on fripperies.

Just on essentials like beer and vinyl, you know!

As you can see, I certainly don't spend much money on clothes.

I tended to live in a world of my own.

I made Cardenden a more exciting place in my imagination than it might have been in real life.

I peopled it with zombies and aliens and invading armies

and I would be the only person who could free it from the oppressor.

I would hang around the street corner in Cardenden

with the tough kids, with their Doc Martens and shaved heads.

But whenever there was a possibility of a rumble, a rammy,

I'd say, "I've got to go home for my tea now."

I wouldn't participate. I'd be on the periphery.

I'd go home and write about it so that I could structure it,

make things happen on the page the way I wanted them to happen.

Whereas real life could be messy and chaotic.

So I guess I've got mixed feelings about the place, because it was a lovely, lovely place to grow up.

And yet, I did feel at 17, 18, that I had to leave

so that I could become a writer.

'Young Rankin moved to Edinburgh in 1978

'with dreams of becoming a poet, but found a city gripped

'by a gruesome murder enquiry.

'The disappearance of two teenage girls,

'dubbed The World's End murders after a pub they were last seen in,

'is a crime that remains unsolved to this day.'

When I started off wanting to be a writer,

I wanted to make sense of the world,

to make sense of Edinburgh and then the wider world.

I decided the cop detective was a good means of doing that

because they have access to the politicians and the big businesses,

but also the dispossessed and disenfranchised.

So every layer of society can be explored in this one kind of novel

with this one character, and that still pertains.

I'm still asking questions about the world, trying to work out in my head,

"How does the world work? How is everything connected up?"

Each book is another small failing to explain that properly to myself,

so I've got to start again.

"Deaths along motorways over a series of years, are they connected?"

"Retired cop (?) Parent of missing kid from years back (?) On a quest."

"People who frequent motorways.

"Sleazy, desperate, travellers, truckers, petrol stations,

"cafes, roadworks guys, AA patrolmen, hitchers, reps, holidaymakers..."

I'm working hard to make sense of this...fucking plot!

I'm surrounded by scraps of paper and notes,

but some of those notes relate to things that are going to happen,

things that have got to happen within the next few pages, scenes or chapters.

"A 15-year-old girl has gone missing

"while hitchhiking along a scenic highway in rural Scotland.

"The only clue is a photograph sent from her phone.

"Two detectives, one of them retired, are working the case

"when they learn that there may be other victims out there,

"stretching back a decade or more."

A lot of this comes from your own observations and experience.

How do the worlds of fiction and the real world...coincide?

The real world is very messy and incomplete.

Often, questions aren't answered. We can't always make sense of things.

What the novel does for me is a therapeutic thing of giving a shape.

I can take all that mess, all these notes and clippings,

all these moments and mondegreens and give it a shape, give it an arc,

make it into a story, and that is very satisfying.

-You can be God!

-Of course you're God.

You ARE God. You have the power of life and death over your characters.

If someone annoys you, you can bump them off in your books.

'Hard-boiled Scottish crime writing, or tartan noire, as it's known,

'is now well-established.

'But when Rankin started writing the Rebus books,

'British crime fiction was altogether more genteel,

'a place of country houses and spinster sleuths.

'What Rankin did was to bring a shot of reality to the genre.

'The Edinburgh of his books is a warts and all city,

'peppered with real characters and real places.'

A pint of heavy as pulled by a student.

Useless! She's a nag!

Finish that. Go back, get a picture of Angela, get her circulated.

-What are you going to do?

-What I do best.

Drinking and thinking.

'In the novels, Rebus famously does most of his drinking and thinking

'in the Oxford Bar.'

When I first started drinking here, I'd started to think about writing this Rebus book.

Where was he going to drink? This place was full of off-duty cops.

It was a very popular drinking hole with cops.

So I thought, this is where Rebus would drink. There's no bells or whistles. No affectation.

It's hidden away, part of the secret Edinburgh I'm going to write about.

Then I thought this makes people think they're getting a book about a real guy!

He lives in a real street, drinks in a real pub, works in a real police station. He must be real.

I think you said that if you were to meet Rebus, you wouldn't get on.

No. If he walked into this pub - which he does, regularly -

and met me, he would see me as being a wishy washy liberal,

suckled by the state, never had to do a hard day's work in his life.

All I do is tell lies for a living.

He wouldn't see that as being a proper job.

We'd talk about beer, about music for maybe 20 minutes, half an hour.

Then he'd get a bit prickly and he'd have to leave, or I'd have to leave.

Otherwise he's going to take me outside for a fight.

He's the bastard responsible for all this. I'm gonna fucking have him!

-Be careful.

-Too late for that now.

Is it true that you couldn't watch the shows?

-I've still never watched them.

-You have never watched...?

-No.

I've got them on DVDs, which I've not watched yet.

I didn't want the books to suddenly be John Hannah or Ken Stott,

physically or in terms of their intonation or thought process.

You thought that if you were contaminated or somehow...

It happened to Colin Dexter with Morse. He says it openly.

He changed the character of Morse in the books to be more like John Thaw,

the actor who played him, because he was seduced by the characterisation.

I don't want to change my character. I know my character.

If he's going to change, I want him to change for other reasons, not because an actor's taken him on.

So I thought I'm not going near the TV.

'The mark of a great character

'is one who exists in such a tangible way in the reader's mind

'that he can withstand many interpretations.

'I would say Rebus is a great character -

'although he hasn't always been so well loved.'

I've got my diary here from 1987.

March 19th, which was a Thursday,

was publication day for Knots & Crosses,

the first book to feature John Rebus.

He wasn't an inspector. He was a detective sergeant.

It says, "Publication Day, which was no big thing.

"I like it before my books are published, when I can dream of greatness.

"Afterwards, there is only cold reality."

There were a few reviews and a real stinker.

"Yesterday..." name erased "..reviewed my book in the Glasgow Herald, a real hatchet job

"with nary a word of praise.

"Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard" it says! CHUCKLES

'Because the early Rebus books weren't selling,

'Rankin had no choice but to diversify.'

I did go through a period where I wrote thrillers under a pseudonym,

aimed at an international airport audience, really.

-That sounds opportunistic of you, Ian.

-It was. I was skint.

I was writing Rebus novels but nobody was buying them

in great numbers, so I wasn't making enough money to feed my family.

I had to write two novels a year. My publisher did not want two Rebus novels a year.

They had enough trouble selling one. So I wrote thrillers.

But I didn't like it as much as I liked writing A, about Scotland and B, about cops.

'After ten years of mid-list obscurity,

'Rankin finally broke through with his eighth Rebus book,

'Black And Blue.

'Richly detailed and broader in scope than his previous books,

'Black And Blue evoked the social,

'political and criminal landscape of modern Scotland.

'It was awarded the Gold Dagger,

'and propelled Ian from struggling genre writer

'to blockbusting author

'whose every book since has been a Number One best-seller.

'But with success comes a greater pressure to deliver,

'a pressure made worse by the fact that, as he writes this new book,

'he still doesn't have a clear idea of where the story is going.'

The fear has arrived.

Every book before you start is a kind of notion of a perfect book that you're going to write.

As you begin to write it, the notion of perfection begins to fall away.

That's happening, so the fear now is that when I look at the book,

what I've written so far, it won't be very good.

And the other fear is that I'm not going to know how it's going to end.

I don't know if I've shown you the quote on the wall in my study,

but it is quite pertinent.

It sits above my computer.

"Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea," says Iris Murdoch.

So that's where I am, the wreck of a perfect idea.

-MIRANDA:

-This is where we're at its toughest, where he's writing daily,

not absolutely certain where he's going.

One of my things to do is to remind him which phase he's in when he's writing.

We always talk about the 65-page pause,

where he has poured onto the page all the things he's thought about,

all his ideas are down in black and white.

Then he kind of runs out of steam and he's always saying,

"It's going really badly." I say, "You're at page 65?"

He says, "I am at page 65." And I say, "It'll be all right."

A lot of people would be surprised that you leave so much open.

Do you know what Rebus is going to find at the end? What's the last few pages, few chapters?

I've got a sense of where the book might end up,

but I've got no idea what's going to happen in the intervening 300 pages.

The first draft is me being the detective,

finding out how these characters connect to these characters,

finding out places we need to go, interesting scenes.

And then the book will say we want to go in this direction now.

Not the direction you thought you were going in, but this one is more interesting.

So the first draft is me feeling my way,

as the detective is doing, towards a solution.

Usually, it turns out to be different from where I thought it was going to go.

Which is a thrill, but I wouldn't recommend it as a way of writing a book.

'As well as the Rebus novels, Rankin has written a number of stand-alone books.

'One is being turned into a TV drama starring Stephen Fry.

'Doors Open is a thriller about a banker, a professor and a self-made millionaire

'who conspire to pull off an art heist.'

I'd heard of Ian Rankin. I knew he was an immensely successful writer.

His books always zoomed to the top of the charts.

And I'd watched Rebus, both in his young incarnation

played by John Hannah, and then the older...

-SCOTTISH ACCENT

-..and slightly darker Ken Stott.

And I'd loved them both.

'Ian may stay away from the Rebus programmes,

'but he acknowledges there are certain advantages to having your work televised.'

In the UK, to be a Number One best-seller,

you probably have to sell 20,000 or 30,000 paperbacks in any given week.

And a Rebus novel or an Ian Rankin novel

might end up selling 250,000 copies in paperback.

Five to ten million people could watch it on TV!

If a fraction of them who haven't bought the books buy the books, you're making a bit of extra income.

And, action!

-You started without me.

-I warn you, Alan, I'm not in the mood.

If you're not at the dinner, you're probably on the menu.

Thank you, Robert...

It's really interesting watching three characters who, until now,

have only been words on the page for me or characters inside my head.

Suddenly, they have human shape.

I think all three look pretty much perfect, as far as casting goes.

So that's very pleasing.

A lot of dialogue is stuff I didn't write, it was added by James Mavor,

better lines than mine in some cases, which is really annoying.

'Screenwriter James Mavor is an old university friend,

'and can remember a time when not everything Ian wrote

'turned to gold.'

We started up a magazine, a fanzine for writing, called Sharp Edges.

-My first publisher.

-Wonderful name.

First stuff I ever got in print was in that magazine.

-We published two issues of some quite embarrassing poetry, I think.

-Yes.

-Which I happen to have here!

-No, please.

This is classic, vintage memorabilia, Sharp Edges.

Ian's poem there with a lovely illustration.

-I'll just read the first two lines.

-Go on.

"Cejan, in a listless frame of mind,

"paints mauve sketches of the homeland

"far beyond the greying mists of Bern."

-There's so much wrong with that.

-It's very good(!)

In the second one, there's a poem about a one-night stand.

Let's not even go near that one. No. Let's not go near that one.

'Thankfully, for all involved, Ian ditched the poetry

'and took up crime writing.'

Crime actually provides a better snapshot, I think,

of the culture, the milieu in which it's set,

than any other genre.

Sometimes, really good genre writing is a lot better than mediocre great literature.

I think Rebus fits in very well. Young Rebus is kind of hopeful.

He believes that, not only can you solve the crime, the case,

but that in each case he solves he'll somehow...

make Edinburgh a better place.

Then the older Rebus, when you meet him,

has given up that idea entirely.

He can solve the case, and he needs to solve the case,

but he no longer believes that in unlocking one case,

somehow he's making Edinburgh better.

He's become a pessimist, and one feels very sorry for him.

I think that it's an extraordinary journey.

There are not many equivalents because most of the great figures

like Holmes, Poirot and Miss Marple stay the same, absolutely the same.

But there's real growth in Rebus.

-ACTOR:

-'"The job's changed, Siobhan. Everything's..."

'He struggled to find the words.

'"You're vinyl. We're digital," Clarke offered.

'"Contacts used to be the way you got things done.

'"The only network that mattered was the one out on the street."

'"Your way works, too, John. Don't go thinking you're obsolete."

'She pointed to his nearly empty glass. "Are we having another?"

'"Might as well, eh?"'

The slight problem with this new book, it doesn't start with a crime scene.

People will tell you that's a mistake.

If you want to sell loads of copies of your crime novel,

the crime has got to happen page one, grip the reader from page one.

I've made a note to myself, "If this looks too slow,

"put in a little bit right at the start in italics."

LAUGHING: From the killer's point of view! It's such a cliche!

-I sense you partly did this because...

-It's a different kind of book.

And because you're bringing Rebus back and having to say to the world,

-"This is Rebus now. He's a different person."

-He is.

-It's a different kind of book and, also, it's a character study.

-Yeah.

It's a study of loss because I want him to get to know someone

whose child went missing many years ago.

They have never managed to escape that moment. They're still looking for their child.

So they come to Rebus saying, "There's a connection.

"People keep going missing and nobody's noticed."

The cops always dismissed them as being too wrapped up in this moment

when their child went missing.

But Rebus has a connection with him.

There's an empathy there, so he decides to do a bit of digging.

He starts to believe their story.

There's a tight relationship between them that I want to happen.

So it's much more a book about loss and memory and mortality

and letting go of people,

than it is a story about a whodunit/serial killer.

Maybe nobody will buy it, of course. Maybe everybody will be put off.

Reviewers will say, "Mr Rankin is writing a different kind of book and it's not good."

I've just had a fairly good few days.

In that what I put down on the page seemed to be...

..good stuff.

I was enjoying it and it did seem to be pushing the plot forward.

On the other hand, late last night, I suddenly got the fear again,

that I really don't know where this book is going, even at this stage.

It just seems to be a bit random

and...not hugely exciting.

I was going to take a day off on Monday because I'm taking the train down to London

for my publisher's 20th anniversary party, where I'm going to be giving a speech, which I've not written yet.

I'll take the manuscript with me and read it on the train,

and try and get to grips with it - again.

To just see if it's as...bad as I think it is.

MUSIC: "Miss You" by The Rolling Stones

HUM OF CONVERSATION

I love Ian Rankin.

I love his stories. They're very gritty, very real.

-When you know Ian, he's such a nice man!

-You go, "It'll be fine."

Then you turn the page and go, "No, it really isn't fine!

"There's another body!" And the creative way they've died.

-You care about the characters.

-You do.

-So he makes the people real.

His characters are people that are flawed, but that you're rooting for.

He's wonderful at plotting.

If you want to start reading any crime fiction, possibly any novel,

start with Ian Rankin.

30% of my head is here and 70% is in Edinburgh, writing the new book.

So it's a kind of weird experience.

On the train, I was reading the new book, the manuscript,

thinking what's got to happen next.

This is just tearing me away from something I really want to be doing.

'I'm not a huge fan of big gatherings of people.

'I'm a bit claustrophobic.

'There are people trying to get you to go to their festival,

'journalists who are after a little titbit for the next day's paper.

'You're trying to say hello to everybody, not drink too much so you don't get stupid.

'Most of my brain is being taken up with this book.'

It's still a weird roller coaster. One day I'm enjoying it.

The next I'm not. One day I think it's OK. The next, it's dreadful.

We're two-thirds of the way through the book and there's still stuff I don't know what's going to happen.

I've got a good idea what's going to happen in the next five or ten pages, but not the pages after that.

There's lots to be afraid of - the fear of the next page.

The next day when you go, "I've no idea what's going on here."

I panic and think, "I really don't know what's going on.

"I don't feel in control of this process."

And you've just got to kind of hang on and get through it.

-MIRANDA:

-The role of his family during this period is trying to get out from under his feet.

It's organising the February break - away!

Where am I going to take the kids away for Easter?

It's sort of staying out of his way while he gets on with it.

It just takes an awful lot of psychological and emotional energy to do it.

It's not that he is a person who doesn't care about his family

and is not going to interact with us on a human basis.

It's just how he is - now.

It will be a passing phase.

Well, here it is.

The first draft is finished.

It's ragged, very ragged.

I'm not at all happy with the last 30 or 40 pages.

This is where the magic happens!

This is where the magic happens. (SIGHS)

Doesn't feel like magic at the moment. It feels like hard work.

With a lot more hard work ahead.

Hey ho.

I've seen first drafts in worse shape, I just can't think when.

'It may be rough and ready, but Ian does finally have his plot.

'The book sees Rebus travelling up and down the A9,

'in search of missing persons,

'who may or may not be murder victims.'

Inverness, where some of the investigation takes place.

Then we go up the A9,

and across to Rosemarkie.

Drive past Tain and we come to this place here,

Edderton.

'There's something else about this book,

'a special treat for Rankin fans.

'Ian's decided to bring together his two leading men,

'Rebus and Malcolm Fox, for the very first time.'

Oh, boy! You get a very different version of Malcolm Fox from the two Malcolm Fox novels.

In The Complaints and The Impossible Dead,

Malcolm comes across as a really nice guy.

When you start to see him through Rebus's eyes you go, "What a shit!

"He's just tried to destroy our pal, Rebus. Why would he do that?

"Rebus is the good guy." So that's quite fun.

'The book is still far from finished.

'There are characters who need fleshing out,

'sub-plots and red herrings to be added.'

Here, for example, that's all notes on things that I want to happen.

The same with this, stuff that I want to add to the second draft.

'But by now, surely, Ian has solved the most important mystery of all.

'Or has he?'

I don't think I've ever written a book where, so close to the end,

I'd no idea who the offender was.

I got some crazy ideas in the course of writing this book as to who the killer might be.

Here we go. Page 273, which is... nine pages from the end of the first draft.

I'm going, "Oh! Another possibility.

"This guy could be the killer." LAUGHS

That just... It's not right. It's not right.

MUSIC: "Midnight Rambler" by the Rolling Stones

'Before he starts on the second draft, Ian must turn detective

'and embark on a fact-checking mission,

'retracing Rebus's journey up the A9.'

It's become quite important to me that I get the details right.

Didn't use to be in the early days.

Now that I'm making a good living telling lies about real professions,

I feel I owe it to them to get the details of their jobs right.

Perth to Inverness, 114 miles.

There's an awful lot of this stuff I could get by going online.

What does the outside of the police station in Inverness look like?

I could stick in the postcode and find out.

That's not the same as standing in front of it.

I need to imprint it in my head.

Which means taking the road trip myself, the trip Rebus would have taken.

# ..Talkin' 'bout the midnight rambler, yeah

# The one you never seen before... #

'One of the major scenes in the book

'takes place in the small seaside village of Rosemarkie.'

So Rebus goes down onto the beach.

"What is it you're afraid of?" Rebus inquired, receiving no answer.

Magrath had hauled himself onto the roadway.

The note I've made is, "Does he need to climb?

"Check when I'm at Rosemarkie." He wouldn't be able to climb up.

He's a retired police officer, around 70 years old.

There's no way he's climbing over the wall.

He would be taking the steps.

So, I can get that tiny detail in for my own satisfaction.

The more research you do, the more you want to show people you've done the research,

so you put too much of it in, and that slows down the story.

Having done this road trip, it'll probably boil down to half a page.

Day two of the road trip, and the weather has changed spectacularly.

The first thing to do is to get on to the A9,

start heading north again until we get to Edderton.

Hopefully, I don't need to make too many changes to what I've written,

i.e. the landscape will be as I have imagined it.

'The clue that links the missing persons

'is that every one of them sent a photo of a wild Scottish landscape

'from their mobile phone at the time of their disappearance.

'A public appeal to identify the landscape leads Rebus to the tiny village of Edderton,

'where a police sniffer dog makes a shocking discovery.'

I'd say this is ideal. These woods work well as the place where the bodies are.

This is ridiculous. It's almost exactly as I'd imagined it would be

from looking at a map, just a name on a map,

and thinking, "If I go up that road, maybe there'll be fields,

"hills in the distance."

I mean, I've described this already in the book.

This is spot-on. Even the weather, because when Rebus comes up here, the weather is minging.

The police need to wear wellies.

Even the fact that you can see tyre tracks.

In the book, a search is being made of the fields,

but stuff's found in the woods next to the fields by a sniffer dog.

-ACTOR:

-'"What is it?" Rebus asked, trying to catch his breath.

'In answer, the handler directed the torch to a spot just beyond Ruby.

'The dog turned her head in the same direction, licking her chops.

'The earth had been disturbed

'and Rebus knew what it was he was being shown.

'An all too human hand jutting up from the makeshift grave.'

I mean, genuinely, you could leave a body here in these woods

and I have my doubts it would be found for years and years and years.

A spot that could be very peaceful and beautiful, but also,

can be a place where bad people have done bad things.

And hidden the evidence.

I'm not an outdoorsy type at all.

I'd much rather be in a pub or a cafe or a cinema or a book shop

than be clambering over hills going "fol-da-ro, fol-da-ra".

It's just not my thing, but one of the things I've got to do

is to get inside the character's head, rather than my head.

What would Rebus see when he looks at that?

I'm not sure he'd be seeing much at all. He's thinking about the case.

He's thinking about his next cigarette, his next pint or nip of whisky.

He's probably thinking, "How far am I from the nearest pub?

"This is probably the furthest I've ever been from a pub in my entire life," he's thinking.

That's not bad. I might actually put that in the book. CHUCKLES

Rebus might be wondering if this is the furthest he's ever been from a pub in his entire life.

'Maybe he's getting low on cigarettes, as well.'

TURNS RECORDER OFF There you are. That kind of stuff.

Tiny nuggets which will definitely make it into the book.

Anyway, I suppose I'd better get to it.

'With the research done,

'Ian will spend the next few weeks working on his second draft.

'The deadline for the book is now just eight weeks away

'and still, no-one has seen a word.'

Agent and publisher, at the moment, know the title.

And they know that, at the moment, Rebus is the main character.

That's all they know. They don't know the plot. YOU know more than they do.

So sharing this with us isn't something you'd normally do?

No. I mean, I might talk to my wife, if I was having a problem.

She would say, "What's the new one about?" I'd tell her it's a road trip, missing persons.

The past, mortality. But in the main, I don't talk to anyone.

In the past, my publishers haven't had much of an idea what the book is about until I deliver it to them.

'The return of Rebus is too juicy a publicity opportunity to miss.

'Ian's publishers have decided to make a big splash

'and announce Rebus's return

'at the Hay-on-Wye Festival.'

We know that you do a book a year.

You must be working on something different now.

I wondered what you were up to, what you were planning.

I started writing the book in January this year.

It'll come out at the beginning of November.

And, um... It is Rebus.

He's back. He's back.

APPLAUSE

I'm afraid we have run out of time.

Thank you, Ian, for talking to us.

SHE LAUGHS Thank YOU.

And thank you, audience.

'Oh, THAT seemed to go well.

'But back in Edinburgh, things don't look quite so rosy.'

Two pages dedicated to the fact that it's going to be a disaster,

by Tiffany Jenkins, who hasn't read the book yet.

"Who can blame Ian Rankin for milking it?

"Maybe it's time someone had a word. Rebus, you're past it. Stop embarrassing yourself."

I've no idea why she thinks...

There is isn't an argument there as to why Rebus shouldn't come back.

If it's a crap book, he probably shouldn't come back.

There's got to be somebody who says, "That's going to be rubbish!"

It's never, "That is rubbish." It's, "That's going to be rubbish.

"I've not read it. I probably won't read it. I'm not a fan of the books.

"I've read very few of them. It's going to be rubbish."

'Buoyed by all the positivity in the press, Ian ploughs on.

'He's been writing for five months,

'and the publisher's deadline has loomed ominously into view.'

So, here is the third draft printed out.

You're thinking, "Well, that's it, then. That's the hard work done."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When you write a book, when you write it for your own entertainment

and you finish it to your satisfaction,

it is the perfect novel, the best novel that's ever been written.

Or the best novel in your genre that's ever been written, or the best novel that you've ever written.

You start showing it to people, and that's when it ceasing to be the perfect novel.

PHONE RINGS

Hello?

Fuck off. Fuck off!

Fucking PPI helplines!

I wouldn't be surprised if the next villain in my book

is someone who runs a PPI helpline.

Every day, I get three or four automated messages.

And if you swear at them they don't go away.

'Ian has now had feedback on his third draft from his editor.

'Caroline Oakley has been editing Rankin's books for 20 years.

'Even though she no longer works for Orion,

'she still edits one book a year, at Ian's insistence.'

"Hi, Ian. Much enjoyed this one, but I do have a couple of things for you to consider.

"I think the prologue could be tightened up and not so much of an obvious info dump." Thanks(!)

I'm known for my comments being quite blunt and quite pointed.

I think Ian appreciates that because what he gets from me is straight.

She doesn't like what I've done with Malcolm Fox in the book, basically.

My big issue with it was the whole character of Malcolm Fox,

as he is portrayed in this book.

As his editor, I'm not just looking at this book,

I have in my head the previous books.

Also, I'm thinking about what comes next. Where do we go from here?

Fox does not come over as a particularly rounded character.

And I think for readers who've grown to know and like him,

they love him from the previous two books,

to me, he didn't make sense.

"You're right to make this a Rebus novel, not Rebus and Fox,

"but Malcolm's got to make sense in context."

I mean, I think it does make sense in context.

It is frustrating to me that, after all these years,

I still don't seem to know what I'm doing, you know.

Having written 27, 28, 30 books,

um... I still need "an amount" of editing.

One of the reasons I like Ian is he can be a bit of a curmudgeon,

he can be a bit awkward.

He's just a bloke. He doesn't come with any airs or graces.

You take him as you find him.

I like his honesty and I think you can read that honesty in the books.

It's not flashy, in a great literary sense.

But it's real.

To achieve real when you're writing fiction is bloody difficult to do.

She's a good editor and she's been editing me for donkey's years.

And we...

This happens, book after book, this stuff that she will ask me to do

that I really don't feel like doing.

I look at the book again and think, "She's right about that."

Or sometimes, "No, still don't agree with her."

TYPING

It's finessing it, smoothing it down with very fine sandpaper.

That's the stage I'm at now, I think.

If I was an absolute perfectionist,

I would just keep refining and refining forever and a day, and the book would never be published.

There comes a point where you've got to say, "I can do no more."

And it's time to let it go.

It's, um...

five to one in the morning.

I promised my publisher

I would have the rewrites done by the end of June.

And I have, literally, just finished the book.

Um...

Again!

Literally, just finished the book again and possibly for the last time, who knows?

So you finished the book.

Yeah. Ish. LAUGHS

-Today?

-Yeah, 1am. 11 hours ago.

I got to the very end of the rewrite. The ending had a lot of work done on it.

So today, when you guys leave,

I will, um, get on to my email and send it off to my publisher in London,

my agent in London, my film and TV agent in London,

my agent in New York and my publisher in New York. Five people will get it.

How does it feel to have written the book, to have finished it?

It's always good to have an idea for a book, a theme, a story you want to tell,

and bring it through to completion and be happy with it, that's great.

All the fear that I had during the writing of the first draft has gone.

But now, I'm kind of bored with it. There are no surprises for me in that story any more.

I'm ready to move on to the next project, to the next set of characters, to the next theme.

-I just don't know what it is yet.

-You REALLY don't know?

-I've no idea!

-You seem quite cheerful about that.

-If I run out of stories, I'll start to panic.

But I've not run out yet.

'The book is written

'and now, the serious matter of press and publicity begins.'

-I'm hoping I've got the right key.

-So am I!

# Police and thieves in the streets

# Oh, yeah!

# Scaring the nation with their

# Guns and ammunition... #

A look of resignation that you may not be getting out of this.

# ..Fighting the nation with their

# Guns and ammunition... #

-Have you got the key?

-Somewhere.

-Somewhere?

I've got a plane to catch!