Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus by Craig Cabell

including a successful career as a novelist and TV personality. Yes, time changes, to misquote Bob Dylan, it moves on like a gentle stream, babbling away across the years. Rankin also reflected on the fact that Auchterderran Junior High was no longer aschool. It had disappeared just like his Sunday School church.
    He toyed with his memories for a while, allowing the distance of his previous life to affect him, wash over him. Was this Ian Rankin’s former home? More to the point, was it John Rebus’s? The answer to both questions was yes, but Rebus had had a typical Cardenden upbringing, Rankin hadn’t. Rankin had escaped, Rebus hadn’t. So somehowthe truth was much stranger than the fiction created.
    After his ‘personal journey’ (the sub-title to Rebus’s Scotland ) it was time to go home to his new life and leave behind the mixed memories and influences of his formative years. Two years later he would be writing Rebus’s retirement novel Exit Music . My God, what a life that character had! ‘…you can always console yourself with a couple moregins,’ John Rebus would observe in Exit Music and, for him, it was probably the only escape from a melancholy existence. Not so for Ian Rankin. His life had been an extraordinary journey, due to his perseverance with his dream of writing.
    I find it interesting that there was a five-year break between the first two Rebus novels, and that journalist Jim Stevens was the first character to get asequel not Rebus. But the character ate away at Rankin enough to warrant a return, and a much better book it was too. Couple that with the fact that friends of his wanted to know more about John Rebus, and a little bit of luck – serendipity maybe – focused the way ahead. So in that respect Rebus became Rankin’s lucky break, writing about the life of a working class Fifer to escape the life of a workingclass Fifer!
    The first time we meet Rebus in Hide and Seek , he is at a girlfriend’s dinner party feeling most uncomfortable. Rebus isn’t one for making small talk. He has a serious outlook on life and doesn’t suffer fools – or pretentious book dealers – gladly. He knows he should make more of an effort for the sake of his girlfriend – Rian – but he can’t even manage that over the weekend. Hehas neglected to buy a new suit for the occasion and a book he bought for her – Doctor Zhivago – he has decided to keep for himself. He has also neglected to remember that she is on a diet and doesn’t like lilies, which turns a gift of lilies and chocolates into a pretty bad move! He is forgiven, because after the guests have gone, he advances on Rian like a caveman and she somehow succumbs. Althoughthings would get worse in time, it is good to see that the archetypical male chauvinist still got a result!
    Like many older officers in the Police Force – especially in films – Rebus is considered a bit of a dinosaur. He lacks airs and graces and does things his own way, based upon what was once a tried and proved formula; he has just got too experienced.
    Rian, and probably his former girlfriendGill Templer, found Rebus’s quiet strength sexy to begin with but under that hard veneer is a man who is perhaps a little too unsophisticated for them, and selfish. Although a little disorganised in his home life, Rebus seems to appeal to attractive women. Maybe Siobhan Clarke, his partner in crime-fighting, finds him attractive for an older man. It must be Rebus’s manner which engages the womenbut, like his ex-wife’s love for him, the novelty wears off!
    In Hide and Seek we find that Rebus is slow at writing to his daughter Samantha, something which must have affected the girl as she has decided to write to him less often as a consequence. Rhona – his former wife – is a painful memory. He doesn’t want her to find out that his recent relationship with Gill Templer has failed and thathe had been promoted to Gill’s level: Detective Inspector.
    But is all of this anything