SCOTTISH author Ian Rankin explained why the death of his mother when he was just a teenager may have led him to his most famous character from his bestselling Rebus novels.
During an interview with BBC Scotland News Rankin spoke about how his mother, Isobel, became ill just two weeks after he left the family home in Fife at the age of 19 to study at the University of Edinburgh.
He remembers her as a “lovely wee mum” as she died just 10 months after he left home having never been formally diagnosed.
“It was a tough time and the stuff I was writing got very dark as a result of that and maybe that was the start of the journey that would lead to me writing quite dark police novels about Edinburgh,” he told the BBC.
The author said he split his time between his hometown in Cardenden and in Edinburgh where he was “pretending to be bohemian”.
He said: “I was smoking Gauloises cigarettes and reciting bad poetry that I wrote and then I would jump on the train and go back to Cardenden and watch my mum deteriorating.”
Writing helped him cope with the death of his mother as he said it helped him try and answer some of the biggest questions about the world we live in.
“Humanity seems a wee bit bleak to you when that sort of stuff happens and you think where is God in all this, nowhere to be seen," he said.
“[With crime fiction] you are looking at the human condition, you're trying to answer some very big questions about the way the world is and the way human beings are so it is possible that my mum dying got me thinking in those terms.”
Rankins's father, Jim, died 10 years after his mother and saw him become a published author but didn’t get to see him rise to the heights of writing fame that he’s achieved.
The Edinburgh-based author has sold more than 35 million copies of his John Rebus series and is about to release his 25th book, Midnight and Blue, as he said he has no thoughts of slowing down anytime soon.
Translated into 36 languages, Rebus is enjoyed by thriller fans across the world, but the 64-year-old said writing hasn’t gotten any easier for him despite his long and successful career.
“I am living the dream, but it doesn't make the books any easier to write,” he said.
“I was under the impression the more you wrote the easier it would be, but it seems to get harder as you get older.”
Midnight and Blue is expected to be released on October 10.
