CRIME writer Ian Rankin told how writing about Glasgow in 1972 to complete the late William McIlvanney’s final novel was an "escape from the pandemic".
Rankin, 61, completed The Dark Remains during lockdown - the last work from McIlvanney’s Glasgow-set detective novels featuring Jack Laidlaw.
The Rebus author was asked to finish McIlvanney’s final work from a manuscript found by his widow Siobhan Lynch.
Confined to his home in Edinburgh, Rankin set about immersing himself in Laidlaw’s world of early 1970s Glasgow, as well as trying to learn McIlvanney’s style.
He relied on the archives of the National Library of Scotland, old photographs and maps of the city, and McIlvanney’s own words to help bring the writer’s final story to life.
The book will be launched at the Edinburgh International Book Festival today.
Rankin said: “I re-read all the Laidlaw novels three or four times and tried to learn his writing style so I could mimic it.
"I’ve built in as much of Willie’s Glasgow as I possibly could.
“Hopefully it is his Glasgow. He painted a picture of the city and I just stuck to that.
“He’d written some nice descriptive stuff in his notes that I was able to use.
“Luckily, the National Library of Scotland opened up in time for me to go in and look at the Glasgow Herald.
“I pulled out a year’s worth of them out for 1972 – I only knew that the book was set then as the notes had referenced The Godfather, which was released that year.
“For me, writing about Glasgow in 1972 was lovely and an escape from the pandemic.
“It was a much simpler world.
"Although it was a world of criminals, there were no mobile phones and drugs were not quite yet the scourge they would become.
"It absolutely helped me last year.
“I was writing all the time during the pandemic.
“I could live in this fictional world that made sense in a way that the real world wasn’t making sense.
"It did feel like going back in time.
“I had to remind myself that nobody had a mobile phone or a computer at home.
“Pubs closed a lot earlier than they do now and you couldn’t get a drink on a Sunday unless you were in a hotel.
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"That’s why I tend to set my books in the present – they’re much easier to write.”
Rankin first met McIlvanney at the book festival in 1985 shortly after starting work on what would become the first Rebus novel.
At the time Rankin said he told McIlvanney the book was going to be ‘like Laidlaw but set in Edinburgh’.
And he was delighted to be asked by publishers Canongate to finish The Dark Remains because the author had such an influence on him.
Rankin said: “Canongate told me that they had a manuscript that Siobhan had put together by typing up his handwritten notes and that she wanted to know if I thought there was enough there to make a novel.
“I said I’d take a look at it.
"It was all a surprise to me – I hadn’t heard anything at all about.
“My first job was really archaeology, going through 100 sheets of paper and trying to work out what it all meant.
“I told Canongate that I thought they could get a novel out of it if they did X, Y and Z.
“They then came back to me and said that Siobhan wanted me to do it.
"I don’t think I would have tried it with any other writer, but because I’m such a huge fan of Willie and he was such an influence on me I thought I’d give it a go.
"But I did say to them ‘no promises, if I can’t capture his style I’m not going to do it’.
“It was very important to me that this book was a McIlvanney – his voice, his world and his characters.”
He added: "It was an absolutely fascinating process going through his notes because I was inside his head.
“Sometimes he was a bit vague. Because he knew some things, he didn’t need to write them down.
"I just wanted to do him justice, I wanted to celebrate him in some way.
"I wanted new readers to find him and I wanted old readers to rediscover him.
“Hopefully if people come to this book they will seek out the other Laidlaw novels and then his other books.
“The best scenario I can think of is that a whole new generation of readers find his work.”
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