Ian Rankin

“I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.”

“I go to Canada at least every two years.”

“I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.”

“I grew up in a family that was working-class, which taught me to be careful with money.”

“The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.”

“People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story.”

“My father worked in a grocery store. When the grocery chain went into administration, he eventually got a job in the naval dockyard in an office preparing the charts for the boats and the submarines before they headed out.”

“Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and resilience to all but the most terminal of life's tragedies.”