Rebus author Ian Rankin on Covid and stepping into William McIlvanney’s shoes

Scottish author Ian Rankin has taken on the challenge of completing a book started by William McIlvanney, the author who inspired Rankin to create John Rebus.

Scottish author Ian Rankin

It’s a simple answer. “It was lockdown, so I had nothing else to do.’’ That’s Ian Rankin’s explanation for why he took on the task of completing a novel started by one of his literary heroes, fellow Scotsman William McIlvanney. There was no touring, no interviews, no book festivals.

“I think it kept me sane during the lockdown because I could escape into worlds, a fictional world that made sense, when the world around me seemed to not make much sense at all,’’ Rankin says.

Still, it was a risky manoeuvre, even for Rankin whose series of books about his now-retired detective John Rebus are a benchmark for crime fiction, selling millions of copies around the world.

But there was also a sense for Rankin that, in completing The Dark Remains, a circle was being closed.

McIlvanney has been dubbed the “Godfather of Tartan Noir”. His grumpy and crumpled Glasgow detective Jack Laidlaw lighting the path for Rankin and a murder of other Scottish crime writers including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Chris Brookmyre.

Rankin first met McIlvanney in 1985. It was at a book event and at that point Rankin was working on his first Inspector Rebus novel.

“And I said, ‘Look, I’m writing a book, a detective story, that’s a bit like your Laidlaw books but set in Edinburgh’,” Rankin recalls.

McIlvanney wished him luck with his “Edinburgh Laidlaw”.

Over the years they would meet at book festivals and became friends.

“It was a nice arc of a relationship from me being a fanboy, to me actually interviewing him on stage,’’ Rankin says.

Novelist Ian Rankin.

There are three Laidlaw books set in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Glasgow – Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties – but McIlvanney moved away from crime and into literary fiction and poetry.

However, before he died in 2015 at the age of 79, McIlvanney was drawn back to Laidlaw and started making notes and writing scenes for a new story. It was these notes, which ran to around 100 pages, that Rankin would turn into The Dark Remains.

“The first thing, basically, it was archaeology, because I was digging through his notes, trying to work out if this was one story, or was it two stories, and all these different characters we would be writing about,” he says. “Were they all meant to be in one book? Or was he thinking of two books or even more?”

Rankin decided it was best approached as a prequel to the three existing Laidlaw books. The Dark Remains is set in 1972 Glasgow. Laidlaw is a new member of the Glasgow Crime Squad and the book centres around the murder of lawyer Bobby Carter, right hand man to crime boss Cam Colvin. While the official investigation heads off in predictable wrong directions under the guidance of long-time nemesis Ernie Milligan, Laidlaw, the eternal outsider, takes to Glasgow’s streets to find the answers.

As Bob Lilley, the cop who is Laidlaw’s minder observes: “Maybe he’s a streetsman, the way Davy Crockett was a woodsman. Davy could read all the signs in the wild, he’d lived there so long. Probably wasn’t so good on the domestic front. I think Jack’s like that with Glasgow: He brings the city home with him.”

The biggest challenge for Rankinwas to mimic McIlvanney’s style, which is more lyrical, poetic and philosophical than the average crime thriller. The first thing Rankin did was to read the three Laidlaw books again and make notes.

“Willie had left quite a few sections, quite a few bits of dialogue, and descriptions of characters and descriptions of the action and the city. So, I had something to work with,” he says.

While some reviewers have attempted to spot where McIlvanney ends and Rankin starts in The Dark Remains, it is not quite that simple.

“It’s not as if as he had written the first five chapters, and then I had to complete it,” Rankin says. “It’s more like a patchwork; from the very first page there are bits that are me and bits that are Willie.”

McIlvanney had also not spelled out an ending, so that was another challenge for Rankin. In his Rebus books, Rankin made Edinburgh and its citizens as much a part of the story as the detective work and crimes the series is built upon. Now he had to travel to the west of Scotland and do the same for Glasgow. Edinburgh and Glasgow share a motorway, but not much else.

Author William McIlvanney

Another Glasgow crime writer, Caro Ramsey, summed up the difference this way: “My mum always said you get more fun at a Glasgow stabbing than an Edinburgh wedding.” Which is probably rough on both cities.

Rankin immersed himself in the National Library of Scotland to go through old copies of the Glasgow Herald to better understand the city and what was happening in 1972. It was a time of change for the city as it moved into a post-industrial decline as shipyards closed. He also spoke to friends from Glasgow and examined maps and plans from the era to capture the character of the city.

“The Glasgow character remains the same,” he says. “Everybody’s a character, everybody’s an actor in a way, and the sense of humour, that very dark, earthy sense of humour was certainly there on the page from the notes that I read. Quite a few of Willie’s jokes got into the final version of the book.”

The one judge he wanted to please was McIlvanney’s partner Siobhan Lynch and Rankin says the biggest “compliment” he has received so far was when she told him “she couldn’t see the joins”.

“(Siobhan) also said that when she read the manuscript, it was as though he was back in the room with her. She told me that over dinner a couple of weeks ago, and I was nearly in tears when she said it.”

But for all that, Rankin won’t be delving back into the world of Laidlaw. He says there are still some of McIlvanney’s notes that suggest another story but not enough of them to give clear direction.

He has Rebus to get back to as well. There is a stage play on the way and hopefully another novel this time next year.

Rankin hopes The Dark Remains will help introduce new readers to McIlvanney and Laidlaw: “The knock-on effect that there’s a rekindled interest in William McIlvanney and people will go back and read all the other books,” he says.

“That was always my intention that this should be a gateway drug that will take the reader to all of Willie McIlvanney’s books.” ■

The Dark Remains, published by Canongate, is out now

The dark remains book by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin