Ian Rankin
| Ian Rankin | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||
| Born | Ian James Rankin 28 April 1960 Cardenden, Fife, Scotland |
||
| Pen name | Jack Harvey | ||
| Occupation | Novelist | ||
| Nationality | Scottish | ||
| Period | 1984–present | ||
| Genre | Crime fiction | ||
| Notable works |
Inspector Rebus novels Dark Entries |
||
| Spouse | Miranda | ||
| Children | 2 | ||
|
|||
| Website | |||
| www |
|||
Ian James Rankin, OBE, DL, FRSE, FRSL (born 28 April 1960) is a Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.
Rankin was born in Cardenden, Fife. His father, James, owned a grocery shop, and his mother, Isobel, worked in a school canteen. He was educated at Beath High School, Cowdenbeath. His parents were horrified when he then chose to study literature at university, expecting him to study for a trade. However, encouraged by his English teacher, he persisted and graduated in 1982 from the University of Edinburgh, where he also worked on a doctorate on Muriel Spark but did not complete it. He has taught at the university and retains an involvement with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lived in Tottenham, London, for four years and then rural France for six while he developed his career as a novelist. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he worked as a grape picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist, college secretary and punk musician in a band called the Dancing Pigs.
Rankin did not set out to be a crime writer. He thought his first novels, Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek, were mainstream books, more in keeping with the Scottish traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson and even Muriel Spark. He was disconcerted by their classification as genre fiction. The Scottish novelist Allan Massie, who tutored Rankin while Massie was writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh, reassured him by saying, "Do you think John Buchan ever worried about whether he was writing literature or not?"
...
Wikipedia