The crime novel has long since moved from the ranks of guilty pleasure to just pleasurable reading about the guilty.

Literary heavyweights like Gore Vidal, John Banville, Julian Barnes and even J.K. Rowling have renamed themselves (Edgar Box, Benjamin Black, Dan Kavanagh and Robert Galbraith respectively) and delivered crime fiction.

A very elastic genre, crime fiction can successfully move in the deepest, darkest corners of the lives of the downtrodden or the backrooms and ballrooms of billionaires and blue bloods.

But while the offing of snooty duke can be delicious, crime fiction seems to hit home best when it delivers a down-home feeling.

And one of the best of the hometown heroes is the award-winning Ian Rankin’s cantankerous, boozy and of course wonderfully flawed (yes, egads, he smokes) Edinburgh detective John Rebus.

Crime fiction fans will be happy to hear that Rankin is on the move and will kick off a national book tour for his new Rebus novel Even Dogs in the Wild here Nov. 16 at St. Andrews-Wesley church.





Listen to The DGP Podcast as Dana Gee chats with author Ian Rankin about his new book while he driving as a passenger in the fog of Edinburgh:







The Edinburgh writer is also here as a pre-event supporter of the inaugural Cuffed: Vancouver International Crime Fiction Festival that will take place at Performance Works at Granville Island March 11-13, 2016.

“It’s a very broad church,” said Rankin when asked about the popularity of crime fiction. “What I find is crime fiction tells a rattling good yarn. A really good roller coaster ride, a great story. But within that great story there is a lot you can do. If you want to write about the city in which you live crime fiction is really good on the sense of place. If you want to write about social justice and social injustice, if you want to write about politics, if you want to write about corruption in high and low places crime fiction will do it for you and the figure of the detective is a kind of every man figure.”

While the detective wanders through the narrative trying to make sense of the story Rankin sees the reader relating as he or she wanders through life trying to make sense of that story.

“Crime fiction can deal with very big moral issues, very big complex issues,” said Rankin. “It can deal with stories plucked right from the newspapers and the TV sets right now, but it does it all in a very digestible form so it’s very easy to read. So for all of those reasons I think crime fiction is pulling in a lot of people, a lot of people who want to be writers.”

No doubt those crime fiction hopefuls will be on hand next week to hear the very entertaining Rankin speak.

When I caught up with Rankin recently the circumstances were very fitting for a crime writer.

“We’re driving through the fog,” said Rankin reassuring me that he was not driving as he was making his way home on a dark, late dismal Scottish night. “Anything can happen.”

While the atmosphere has commit a crime written all over it Rankin does admit though his thoughts at the moment are not on future plots but the promotion of the new book.

This time out Rebus is now 65 and has been once pulled out of retirement to consult on the case of the attempted murder of his old nemesis Big Ger Cafferty.