Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2015)

Darryl Christie wasn’t a huge fan of Glasgow. It sprawled in a way his own city didn’t. And there were still traces of the old enmity between Catholic and Protestant – of course that existed in Edinburgh too, but it had never quite defined the place the way it did Glasgow. The people spoke differently here, and had a garrulousness to them that spilled over into physical swagger. They were, as they chanted on the football terraces, ‘the people’. But they were not Darryl Christie’s people. Edinburgh could seem tame by comparison, head always below the parapet, keeping itself to itself. In the independence referendum, Edinburgh had voted No and Glasgow Yes, the latter parading its saltired allegiance around George Square night after night, or else protesting media bias outside the BBC headquarters. The political debate had melted into a blend of carnival and stairheid rammy, so that you never knew if people were joyous or furious.

Darryl Christie had considered all the implications for his various business interests and come to the conclusion that either outcome would probably suit him just fine, so in the end he hadn’t voted at all.

Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2013)

‘The time you phoned him, did you try a bribe?’

‘Didn’t think it would work. I mean, he’d have taken the cash but then come back for more.’

‘In other words, you’d never have been free of him?’

‘Right.’

‘An admission that doesn’t really help your case.’ Rebus paused. ‘What is it he had, Stefan? What could he tell Macari and her team? I’ve been through the custody ledger and there’s half a page missing from the week before Saunders killed Merchant. It got me thinking – could there be something Saunders knew? He comes to you, tells you he’ll do a deal – forget all about it if you get him off next time he’s arrested. You couldn’t know he was going to bludgeon some poor sod to death, so you shook hands on it.’

‘The hearse is arriving,’ Gilmour said, nodding in the direction of the gates. A slow-moving procession of vehicles, the engines almost silent. Wreaths shrouding the coffin, allowing only glimpses of gleaming brass handles, varnished pale wood. In the car behind, the Justice Minister’s widow and son. The First Minister and his deputy had re-emerged from the chapel and were flanking the door, hands clasped as if in prayer, heads bowed.

‘Nothing to say, Stefan?’ Rebus whispered into his neighbour’s ear. Gilmour’s jaw was jutting as he watched the vehicles pull to a halt. The First Minister offered his condolences to the widow, along with a peck on the cheek. She was dressed in black, and wore sunglasses which obscured half her face.

‘Only that you’re making a mistake, John. Sounds very much as if you’ve decided you’re not part of the Saints any more.’

‘Let me tell you something, Stefan. I spoke to Porkbelly and he was all for letting Frazer take the rap for that gun, same as you just did. Seems to me you’ll shit on anyone to save your own necks.’

‘Maybe you think you’re clean, but you’re not,’ Gilmour retorted. ‘You knew we hung on to that gun – why didn’t you take it to the bosses at the time? Remember Interview Room B, that time I walked in and you had your hands around a suspect’s throat? I forget the name now, but it’ll come back to me if necessary. The drugs we planted on that barman we didn’t like? The prossies we let off after an hour in the holding cell, once they’d slipped us a few quid or a promise? The restaurant tabs that never arrived at the end of a meal? Two hundred cigarettes here, a case of malt there . . . The stories we could tell, eh?’

Gilmour’s eyes were boring into Rebus’s.

‘I took the fall, John,’ he went on. ‘And I did it for all of us. Remember that, when you’ve got the tin-opener poised above the can marked “worms”.’

The Crime Interviews: Volume Two by Len Wanner (Blasted Heath 2012)

Good question. Why are you writing books?

I'm writing books to try and make a connection with a reader. It doesn't matter whether it's a reader who's on the Booker panel or a reader who's a waitress... Whenever I'm up for a prize I think: "Who the fuck are you to judge me?" And then I think: "Give me that fucking prize." Ha! You don't know these people exist until they write to you to say: "You're up for a prize. Do you want to come and have a bad hotel dinner, while feeling really nervous and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and then get up and make a cunt of yourself in front of a big audience?" What the fuck?

I mean, prizes are good marketing tools. They're shorthand for telling readers: "This is a good book." But a better way for people to come to your books is for their pals to say: "You'll like that book. It really meant something to me."

When did a book first really mean something to you?

When I was nineteen, reading Thérèse Raquin in a bedsit, being totally transported by the writing and the way two words can click together, and sitting back, thinking: "What an amazing thing to do with your life – to make that sort of connection with another person, to feel exactly what Zola was talking about, or looking at, or imagining... What an incredible connection!" And what I really love about Zola is that he was a political writer.

Do you see yourself as a political writer?

Yeah! Orwell was who I stole from the library... So it's that connection: reading A Tale of Two Cities and sweating with my heart racing at the end because it was so exciting. But I think you really have to keep your eyes on the prize, because otherwise you become bitter and disillusioned despite having everything. You're being published, you're making a living, you're spending your days in pyjamas wrestling with words, and people are writing to you saying: "I read your book and it mattered to me." How lucky is that?

(Len Wanner interviewing Denise Mina.)

I bloody knew it!

From a New Zealand newspaper's Q & A with Ian Rankin, who's currently bigging up the excellent 'The Impossible Dead':

The book that changed me is

... Laidlaw by William McIlvanney. I read this in the early 1980s when I was a student but also trying to become a published novelist. It's beautifully written, with taut plotting and a clean style. Laidlaw made me think I could maybe write my own crime fiction.

It has to be said . . . Morris Cafferty is no John Rhodes.

The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2011)

‘Any other names?’ Fox asked.

‘One or two are probably still a bit cracked – living as hermits in the Western Isles and writing anarchist blogs. Most of them probably found that as they got older, they became the sort of person they’d previously despised.’

‘The establishment, in other words?’

‘These were bright people, in the main.’

‘Even the ones scooping up handfuls of anthrax from Gruinard?’

‘Even them,’ Professor Martin said, sounding sleepy from all the wine. ‘It’s all changed now, though, hasn’t it? Nationalism has entered the mainstream. If you ask me, they’ll sweep the next election. A few years from now, we could be living in an independent European democracy. No Queen, no Westminster, no nuclear deterrent. That would have been impossible to predict a scant few years back, never mind quarter of a century.’

‘Pretty much what the SNLA and all the others were fighting for,’ Fox concurred.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Is there anyone I could try talking to about all of this, other than psychiatric patients and hermits?’

‘Do you know John Elliot?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He’s on TV all the time. News and current affairs.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He merits a mention in my book.’

‘What about Alice Watts?’

‘Who?’

Browned off

Not surprised to see Ian Rankin's name so high up the list if last year's Dunfermline charity shops are anything to go by. The question is, do people actually read the books that they eventually palm off to charity shops?

The author and/or book that always seems to be in abundance at thrift shop sales, stoop sales and library fund raisers in Brooklyn? Step forward Ian McEwan's 2001 novel, 'Atonement'. If I had a dollar for every time that unbroken spine stared back at me at a book sale, I could afford a kindle . . . and afford to put a few books on the kindle.

A Question of Blood by Ian Rankin (Back Bay Books 2003)

Jack Bell nodded, and the two men's eyes met for the first time, then both heads turned to face James, who was seated across the table.

"Well, James?" the lawyer said. "What do you think?"

The teenager seemed to be considering the offer. He returned his father's stare as if it were all the nourishment he needed and he had a hunger that would never be stilled.

Strip Jack by Ian Rankin (Minotaur Books 1992)

'Are you an Inspector of Hospitals?' he asked.

'No, sir, I'm a police inspector.'

'Oh.' His face dulled a little. 'I thought maybe you'd come to . . . they don't treat us well here, you know.' He paused. 'There, because I've told you that I'll probably be disciplined, maybe even put into solitary. Everything, any dissension, gets reported back. But I've got to keep telling people, or nothing will be done. I have some influential friends, Inspector.' Rebus thought this was for the nurse's ears more than his own. 'Friends in high places . . .'

Well, Dr Forster knew that now, thanks to Rebus.

' . . . friends I can trust. People need to be told, you see. They censor our mail. They decide what we can read. They won't even let me read Das Kapital. And they give us drugs. The mentally ill, you know, by whom I mean those who have been judged to be mentally ill, we have less rights than the most hardened mass murderer . . . hardened but sane mass murderer. Is that fair? Is that . . . humane?'

The Complaints by Ian Rankin (Orion 2009)

Lothian and Borders Police HQ was on Fettes Avenue. From some windows there was a view towards Fettes College. A few of the officers in the Complaints had been to private schools, but none to Fettes. Fox himself had been educated largely free of charge - Boroughmuir, then Heriot Watt. Supported Hearts FC though seldom managed even a home fixture these days. Had no interest in rugby, even when his city played host to the Six Nations. February was Six Nations month, meaning there'd be hordes of the Welsh in town this weekend, dressed up as dragons and toting oversized inflatable leeks. Fox reckoned he would watch the match on TV, might even rouse himself to go down the pub. Five years now he'd been off the drink, but for the past two he'd trusted himself with occasional visits. Only when he was in the right frame of mind though, only when the willpower was strong.

Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Paperbacks 1990)

Hyde's Club. Named after Robert Louis Stevenson's villain, Edward Hyde, the dark side of the human soul. Hyde himself was based on the city's Deacon Brodie, businessman by day, robber by night. Rebus could smell guilt and fear and rank expectation in this large room. Stale cigars and spilt whisky, splashes of sweat. And amongst it all moved Ronnie, and the question which still needed to be answered. Had Ronnie been paid to photograph the influential and the rich - without their knowing they were being snapped, of course? Or had he been freelancing, summoned here only as a punchbag, but stealthy enough to bring a hidden camera with him? The answer was perhaps unimportant. What mattered was that the owner of this place, the puppet-master of all these base desires, had killed Ronnie, had starved him of his fix and then given him some rat poison. Had sent one of his minions along to the squat to make sure it looked like a simple case of an overdose. So they had left the quality powder beside Ronnie. And to muddy the water, they had moved the body downstairs, leaving it in candlelight. Thinking the tableau shockingly effective. But by candlelight they hadn't seen the pentagram on the wall, and they hadn't meant anything by placing the body the way they had.

Rebus had made the mistake of reading too much into the situation, all along. He had blurred the picture himself, seeing connections where there were none, seeing plot and conspiracy where none existed. The real plot was so much bigger, the size of a haystack to his needle.

Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Paperbacks 1996)

"Mr. Haldayne has a point, Inspector." Mathieson was sitting down again, in his big Chief Executive chair at the end of the table. Tables without corners were supposed to make everyone equal, but Mathieson's chair was a leather throne. He looked and sounded completely unruffled by events thus far, while Rebus felt his head would explode.

Hundreds of jobs . . . spin-offs . . . happy, smiling faces. People like Salty Dougary, pride restored, given another chance. Did Rebus have the gall to think he could pronounce sentence on the future of people like that? People who wouldn't care who got away with what, so long as they had a paycheck at the end of the month?

Gillespie had died, but Rebus knew these men hadn't killed him, not directly. At the same time he hated them, hated their confidence and their indifference, hated their certainty that what they did was "for the good." They knew the way the world worked; they knew who - or, rather, what - was in charge. It wasn't anyone stupid enough to place themselves in the front line. It was secret quiet men who got on with their work the world over, bribing where necessary, breaking the rules, but quietly, in the name of progress, in the name of the system.

Shug McAnally was dead, but no one was grieving: Tresa was spending his money, and having a good time with Maisie Finch. Audrey Gillespie, too, might start enjoying life for the first time in years, maybe with her lover. A man had died - cruelly and in terror - but he was all there was on Rebus's side of the balance sheet. And on the other . . . everything else.

The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Press 1998)

Rebus knew his own criteria came cheaply: his flat, books, music and clapped-out car. And he realised that he had reduced his life to a mere shell in recognition that he had completely failed at the important things: love, relationships, family life. He'd been accused of being in thrall to his career, but that had never been the case. His work sustained him only because it was an easy option. He dealt every day with strangers, with people who didn't mean anything to him in the wider scheme. He could enter their lives, and leave again just as easily. He got to live other people's lives, or at least portions of them, experiencing things at one remove, which wasn't nearly as challenging as the real thing.

Dark Entries by Ian Rankin and Werther Dell'edera (Vertigo Crime 2009)

Nick Lowe once sang, 'I love my label'

Probably the first and last time I will use this label on the blog:

'Confusing the WRP for the RCG - we've all done it'

Ian Rankin was in his mid-twenties and still a student at Edinburgh University when he wrote that passage. I'm guessing he was settling some old student union scores. The bloke would be a natural for writing guest posts for Harry's Place.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin (Orion 1987)

'Fight Imperialism, fight Racism,'

A young girl wearing a mock-leather coat and little round glasses stood behind Rebus. He turned to her. She had a collecting tin in one hand and a pile of newspapers in the other.

'Fight Imperialism, fight Racism,'

'So you said,' Even now he could feel the alcohol working on his jaw muscles, freeing them of stiffness. 'Who are you from?'

'Workers Revolutionary Party. The only way to smash the Imperialist system is for the workers to unite and smash racism. Racism is the backbone of repression.'

'Oh? Aren't you confusing two entirely different arguments there, love?'

She bristled, but was ready to argue. They always were.

'The two are inextricable. Capitalism was built on slave labour and is maintained by slave labour.'

'You don't sound much like a slave, dear. Where did you get that accent? Cheltenham?'

'My father was a slave to capitalist ideolgy. He didn't know what he was doing.'

'You mean you went to an expensive school?'

She was bristling now all right. Rebus lit a cigarette. He offered her one, but she shook her head. A capitalist product, he supposed, the leaves picked by slaves in South America. She was quite pretty though. Eighteen, nineteen. Funny Victorian shoes on, tight pointed little things. A long, straight black shirt. Black, the colour of dissent. He was all for dissent.

'You're a student, I suppose?'

'That's right,' she said, shuffling uncomfortably. She knew a buyer when she saw one. This was not a buyer.

'Edinburgh University?'

'Yes.'

'Studying what?'

'English and politics.'

'English? Have you heard of a guy called Eiser? He teaches there.'

She nodded.

'He's an old fascist,' she said. 'His theory of reading is a piece of right-wing propaganda to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat.'

Rebus nodded.

'What was your party again?'

'Workers Revolutionary.'

'But you're a student, eh? Not a worker, not one of the proletariat either by the sound of you.' Her face was red, her eyes burning fire. Come the revolution, Rebus would be the first against the wall. But he had not yet played his trump card. 'So really, you're contravening the Trades Description Act, aren't you? Do you have a licence from the proper authority to collect money in that tin?'

The tin was old, its old job-description torn from it. It was a plain, red cylinder, the kind used on poppy-day. But this was no poppy-day.

'Are you a cop?'

'Got it in one, love. Have you got a licence? I may have to pull you in otherwise.'

'Fucking pig!'

Feeling this was a fitting exit line, she turned from Rebus and walked to the door. Rebus, chuckling, finished his whisky. Poor girl. She would change. The idealism would vanish once she saw how hypocritical the whole games was, and what luxuries lay outside university. When she left, she'd want it all: the executive job in London, the flat, car, salary, wine-bar. She would chuck it all in for a slice of pie. But she wouldn't that just now. Now was for the reaction against upbringing. That was what university was about. They all thought they could change the world once they got away from their parents. Rebus had thought that too. He had thought to return home from the Army with a row of medals and a list of commendations, just to show them. It had not been that way, though . . .

Exit Music by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2007)

'No one's about to poison me, Rebus. Sergei and me, we see things the same way. Few years from now, Scotland's going to be independent - not a shred of doubt about that. Sitting on thirty years' worth of North Sea oil and God alone knows how much more in the Atlantic. Worst-case scenario, we do a deal with Westminster and end up with eighty or ninety per cent of the cut.' Cafferty gave a slow shrug. 'And then we'll goand spend the money on our usual leisure pursuits - booze, drugs and gambling. Put a supercasino in every city, and watch the profits stack up . . .'

'Another of your silent invasions, eh?'

'Soviets always did think there'd be revolution in Scotland. Won't matter to you, though, will it? You'll be out of the game for good.' Cafferty gave a little wave of the hand and turned his back.

The Flood by Ian Rankin (Orion 1986)

He examined the faces along the edge of the bus, studying their reflections in the glass. The sun streamed in, and the tiny openings of the windows caused the passengers to broil. One old man looked on to the countryside as if surprised by it. His head shook like a clockwork toy. Sandy thought to himself that this man must have seen a lot of things - the war, the hunger of the Twenties and Thirties, death, decay, a quickly changing world. What good had it done him? He looked as if he might die at any moment, not having comprehended half of what he had seen in his life. Waste. That was the keyword. Perhaps Sandy would write a story about it all when he returned home. It seemed an important enough thing to write about. He wrote a lot of stories and poems in his room.

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin (Little Brown 2002)

- "Where will you be working from?"

- "I thought we might find a spare office at St Leonard's . . . "

- Siobhan's eyes widened. "You think Gill's going to go for that?"

- "I hadn't really thought about it," he lied. "But I can't see a problem . . . can you?"

- "Do the words 'tea,' 'mug' and 'lob' mean anything to you?"

- "Tea mug lob? Is that a Cocteau Twins track?" He won a smile from her. "So you really were just driving around?"

- She nodded. "It's something I do when I can't sleep. Why are you shaking your head?"

- "It's just that I do the same thing. Or I used to. I'm that bit older and lazier these days."

Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin (1994)

Wild Davey Soutar. He and his kind detested the Festival. It took away from them their Edinburgh and propped something else in its place, a facade of culture which they didn't need and couldn't understand. There was no underclass in Edinburgh, they'd all been pushed out into schemes on the city boundaries. Isolated, exiled, they had every right to resent the city centre with its tourist traps and temporary playtime.

not that that's why Soutar was doing it. Rebus thought Soutar had some simpler reasons. He was showing off, he was showing even his elders in The Shield that they couldn't control him, that he was the boss. He was, in fact, quite mad.

Black And Blue by Ian Rankin (St Martins Paperbacks 1997)

"Somehow, fuelled by sheer terror, Allan Mitchison got to his feet, still tied to the chair. The kitchen window was in front of him. It had been boarded up, but the boards had been torn away. The frame was still there, but only fragments of the actual window panes remained. The two men were busy with their tools. He stumbled between them and out of the window.

"They didn't wait to watch him fall. They just gathered up the tools, folded the plastic sheet into an untidy bundle, put everything back in the Adidas bag, and zipped it shut."