Re: RARA-AVIS: Rankin's Black and Blue

From: John Williams ( johnwilliams@ntlworld.com)
Date: 22 Jul 2002


> Rankin's got a web site up at
>
> http://www.ianrankin.com/
>
> It says he won the Chandler-Fulbright scholarship in 1992 and he used the
> money to travel around the US. Does anyone know more about this
> scholarship?

Yes, it was a scholarship for crime writers - one year it would be for a British writer to spend a year in the US then the next year for an American to come to Britain. It ran for five or six years I think. The last British winner was Denise Danks (the last American winner was Larry Beinhart - anyone know what happened to him post Wag The Dog?) and I think there was a sense that the British writers in particular saw the award as a chance to take a free holiday rather than a serious academic post, so the award was discontinued.

As for Ian Rankin. Black and Blue certainly marked the point at which the series came to life, with Rankin consciously using the influence of Ellroy - both stylistically and thematically - to liven up a rather dour series that previously seemed too much in the shadow of both the TV series Taggart and, the great underrated Scottish noir writer, William McIlvanney (whose excellent Laidlaw novels were of course the uncredited source for Taggart).

John

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