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.
‘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?’
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.
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.
'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?'
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.
