Ian Rankin’s Scottish Tenacity. What Is the Secret Behind the Success of His Crime Novels?
Ian Rankin, author of the John Rebus series, has never really experienced a dip in form, even though he has sold tens of millions of books. After a break of several years, he returns with A Heart Full of Headstones.
By Piotr Kofta
The contemporary crime novel is governed by the law of the series. Of course, the first writer to put on these golden handcuffs, more than a century ago, was Arthur Conan Doyle: he wanted to write great historical novels (and indeed he did write them—nobody reads them today), but the public demanded stories and novellas about an eccentric detective so insistently that he was forced to drag Sherlock Holmes out of his grave. Naturally, the monstrous advance straight from the United States also played its part.
Be that as it may, few writers today produce standalone novels within the genre, and even then they usually do so in between volumes of their current best-selling series because, as established writers, they can afford to.
