----- Original Message ----- From: "Marianne Macdonald"
<
marianne.macdonald@lineone.net>
> Jim, I have read them. And I've been struck before
now by the
> unprocedural nature of Rebus' actions.
Ian Rankin describing the Rebus series: "No police procedural
is ever realistic. A realistic police procedural would be the
most boring book in the world, because police investigation
is tedious and police officers are all tiny cogs in the
machine; they never even get to see the whole investigation
through from start to finish."
>Indeed its detailed accuracy would be
almost
> irrelevant to the books.
> I have no sense that Ian is, or has ever been,
especially interested
> in this kind of thing.
Ian Rankin on police procedure: "I've never made it all up.
When I was working on Knots & Crosses, for instance, I
went to a great deal of effort to get things right."
Ian Rankin on procedural accuracy: "They [the police] think I
get the detail right about the office politics, the
in-fighting, all the rest of it, and the sheer tedium that
you sometimes have in an investigation. And that thrills me
because I've never been a police officer, so I really am kind
of making it up but somehow I seem to be getting it right.
Partly that's because I do have contacts in the police now;
there are people I can go and talk to although I never try
and get too close to the police because I don't want the
books to become just PR exercises."
Al
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