Rankin's Inspector Rebus finds another shade of noir

"Film noir" is a well-known style of dark cinema but few will have heard of "tartan noir". The phrase was coined by American crime writer James Ellroy to describe the work of his Scottish rival Ian Rankin.

Rankin, best known for his series of novels featuring Inspector Rebus of Edinburgh, will be the guest at a Herald-Dymocks Literary Lunch at the Stamford Plaza, Auckland, on Thursday, October 9.

His visit to New Zealand marks the publication in New Zealand of the 14th thriller in the series, A Question of Blood.

The 43-year-old Scot was a writer from an early age, though his career choices were occasionally swayed with ventures into pop music (at 12, he invented a pop group in his head, and started writing their lyrics).

Since he had no musical ability, the pop lyrics became poems. By the time Rankin reached Edinburgh University, the poems had won several prizes.

At university Rankin turned from poetry to short stories, again winning literary prizes, and from there into books: his first three novels were written while he should have been studying for a PhD in English Literature.

Writer of eight of the top 10 Scottish best-sellers in 1999, winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award (a detective fiction prize funded by the estate of Raymond Chandler), Rankin has seen his character brought to the screen by John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Mummy).

* A coupon for tickets to the Herald-Dymocks Literary Lunch appears on A12 in the print edition of today's Herald.