Ian Rankin

A few questions Ian Rankin asked himself because literary journalists don't:

How many people have you done away with over the course of your career?

You mean the body count in my books? I've no idea. I think it's quite low – one or two corpses per tome, and each book represents a year in the life of Edinburgh.

Ever dispatched someone and then regretted it?

Often. The prospective member of the Scottish parliament in Set In Darkness – I liked him, but the narrative didn't. Then there was the old priest Rebus used to hang out with – he died of natural causes, but it came as a bit of a shock.

Have you ever been in trouble with the police?

Back when I was writing the first Rebus, they...[read on]

See: Ian Rankin's 6 best books.

Read J. Kingston Pierce's 2000 interview with Rankin at January Magazine.

--Marshal Zeringue