Ian Rankin, the creator of Inspector Rebus, talks live from Edinburgh with New Zealand crime writer Vanda Symon at Word Christchurch 2021.

Ian Rankin, the master of tartan noir, discusses his new book The Dark Remains, which brings to life the criminal world of 1970s Glasgow.

The Dark Remains focuses on a new character, Detective Inspector Laidlaw, and is based on an unfinished manuscript by the late Scottish crime writer William McIlvanney.

Ian Rankin talks with NZ crime writer Vanda Symon live from Edinburgh. (A highlight from the 2021 WORD Christchurch Festival)

Listen to the conversation

Related: Ian Rankin on finishing his literary hero's book (Afternoons)

Ian Rankin:

There was a time in Edinburgh when I was in a street and two doors away, two houses away, was Alexander McCall Smith. And if you went to the top of our road and turned left there was J.K. Rowling, Kate Atkinson was about a quarter-mile further along and then further in town you had other writers as well.

There was one occasion in the local café where all three of us - me, Nicole Smith and J.K Rowling - were all in the café at the same time and had a chat. But it was weird even for a small city. Edinburgh's a city of half a million people, but the number of writers who have chosen to live here is just extraordinary and keeps growing.

Vanda Symon:

What is it about the physical environment there that makes everyone's souls so dark?

Ian Rankin:

Well, it's quite a dark city in some ways, it's a very 'Jekyll and Hyde' city which is why Robert Lewis Stevenson, got the idea for the book from a couple of real Scottish characters. One was Deacon William Brodie, a gentleman by day and thief by night who was eventually hanged on a scaffold he had actually made. That sense of being one thing during daylight and something else at night gave Stevenson the idea for the story because as a child he had a wardrobe in his bedroom made by William Brodie. His nurse would tell him the story of this guy who was good and evil in the same character.

The other thing that was based on was a real Scottish doctor who went to London and consorted with body snatchers. He had gruesome experiments he would carry out in his laboratory. And the way that Stevenson describes the house of Dr Jekyll in London is very much like this guy's house…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details