Author Ian Rankin on 30 years with John Rebus, irascible detective who is his greatest fictional creation
Novelist who’s the star at this year’s Hong Kong International Literary Festival looks back at the sleuth’s creation and evolution, and explains why retiring the hard-headed policeman has proven impossible
For a character originally intended as a one-novel wonder, Detective Inspector John Rebus has had a good run. The hard-living Edinburgh cop, who first appeared in the 1987 crime thriller Knots and Crosses, has gone on to drink, smoke and deduce his way through 20 more novels, garnering millions of fans around the world and turning his creator, Ian Rankin, into one of Britain’s most successful and critically acclaimed crime writers.
Thirty years – and some 30 million book sales – on from Rebus’ debut, and a year to the day since the release of the detective’s most recent outing, Rather Be the Devil, Rankin will be in town to kick off the Hong Kong International Literary Festival with a sold-out dinner at a private kitchen in Wong Chuk Hang, on Friday.
In his first ever visit to the city, Rankin will also appear in conversation at two other events, one discussing the role of cities in crime fiction, alongside Japan’s Hideo Yokoyama and Hong Kong’s Chan Ho-kei (on Saturday, at the naked Hub co-working space in Sheung Wan), the other dissecting 30 years of Rebus’ career (next Sunday, at the University of Hong Kong’s Wang Gungwu Theatre).
“I put it out on Twitter, saying I’m visiting Hong Kong, and people started saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got to go to this bar, you’ve got to go to that bar.’ So you can tell – people think Rebus is coming to Hong Kong, not Ian Rankin.”
