Has Ian Rankin written his last Rebus novel? ‘It’s up to Rebus. He’ll tell me when he’s had enough of me,’ says thriller writer as his new whodunnit heads to York Theatre Royal

Ian Rankin reading the script for Rebus: A Game Called Malice in the rehearsal room. Picture: Jonathan Phang

NOVELIST Ian Rankin is contemplating killing someone. Not surprising, perhaps, as his business is crime in general and murder in particular.

What does come as a shock is the identity of the person he would like to bump off: his best-selling creation, Scottish detective John Rebus.

However, with a new play, Rebus: A Game Called Malice, heading to York Theatre Royal from October 15 to 19, the six-part BBC television series that aired in May and June, and a new book out next Thursday, Rebus is very much alive and investigating.

“I have tried to bump him off or get rid of him several times,” confesses the Fife-born crime writer and philanthropist, who was knighted for services to literature and charity in June 2023.

“But he seems to want to stick around. He refuses to leave my head.” Indeed so. Earlier attempts to rid himself of Rebus, including the detective’s retirement, have ended in failure.

“With the previous novel, I thought this is the end because at the end of the book he’s in court charged with murder and in the dock waiting to be sentenced,” Rankin explains.

“I thought, ‘what a great way to finish the Rebus series,’ then fans disagreed. They said, ‘we need to know what happened in court. Was he found guilty or not guilty?’, so I’ve written this latest book to explain that and answer the question.

“The end of this new book is, I think, a very good end to the series, so let’s wait and see. It’s up to him, not up to me. It’s up to Rebus. He’ll tell me when he’s had enough of me.”

The latest Rebus thriller, Midnight And Blue, will be sending Rankin out and about to do interviews and head to Yorkshire on a book tour to discuss the landmark novel, meet readers and sign copies.

His 7.30pm visit to The Cat Club, Pontefract, on November 21 has sold out, but tickets are still available for his Farsley Book Festival appearance at the Old Woollen, Sunnybank Mills, Town Street, Farsley, Leeds, on November 22, hosted by Truman Books from 12.30pm to 3pm. To boo tickets, go to: trumanbooks.co.uk/event/an-afternoon-with-sir-ian-rankin or ring 0113 805 6019.

Crime writer Ian Rankin, second left, with Rebus: A Game Called Malice cast members Billy Hartman, left, Abigail Thaw and Gray O’Brien. Picture: Jonathan Phang

Before then, at York Theatre Royal, he will take part in the post-show discussion with members of the Rebus: A Game Called Malice company after the October 18 performance of his new play, co-written with Simon Reade.

The plot? A splendid dinner party in an Edinburgh mansion concludes with a murder mystery game, wherein a murder needs to be solved. However, the guests have secrets of their own, threatened by the very game they are playing.

Among them is Inspector John Rebu, but is he playing an alternative game, one where only he knows the rules? Cue suspects, clues and danger with every twist and turn and a shocking discovery – a yes, a real-life murder – that sends this game called Malice hurtling towards a gasp-inducing conclusion.

After mentioning his Yorkshire connections – Rankin’s mother grew up in Bradford and he still has family around there and Leeds, whom he hopes will attend the play in York – he enthuses about his upcoming train journey from Edinburgh to York.

 “I like taking the train,” he says. “It’s a joy with Durham, Newcastle and the coast. A beautiful part of the world to do by train. And you get to go into the railway station bar – The Tap, isn’t it? – and have a pint.”

Tickets are selling well for the Theatre Royal run of Rebus: A Game Called Malice, testament to the public appetite for whodunnit, detective and crime stories. “It’s a very popular genre and producers know it will put bums on seats. It’s a good night out,” says Rankin.

“You’re working hard mentally in a fun way, there’s an interval when you can get a drink and discuss with your friends and family what you think is going on, what happens next. And you’re in and out of the theatre in two hours. As far as I’m concerned, I want to be home and in bed by ten o’clock.”

Rebus has been a hit on stage from the start. Rankin recalls being told by the manager of the King’s Theatre, where the first play, Rebus: Long Shadows, premiered in Edinburgh, that “he’d never seen takings like it”. “So they were very happy because they were selling more drinks at the interval,” says Rankin.

He wrote the first draft of the latest Rebus play during lockdown, “basically to entertain myself”. “It was written without anyone knowing I was doing it,” he says. “When I read it I thought, ‘it’s short but I like it’,  so I showed it to Simon Reade, who is a professional playwright with whom I’d worked previously. He picked it apart and put it together again – and that’s what we’ve got.”

Writing a play and a book present differing challenges. “You have to get in a completely different mindset. In a novel, you can be inside a character’s head, you can have a huge cast of characters, you can range widely over geography and time,” says Rankin. “A play is a much more succinct entity and the actors have to speak your ideas.

A play is a much more succinct entity [than a novel] and the actors have to speak your ideas,” says Ian Rankin

“The challenge for me is in how different it is. You have to tell a story through voices in a way that I don’t when writing a novel. Very early in my writing career I was writing radio plays for the BBC. They were a lot of fun to do and I enjoyed working with the director and actors. Sometimes the actors came up with much better lines than mine. But the writer gets the credit when it’s broadcast, so it’s terrific from my point of view.

“Writing a novel is not collective. You sit there in splendid isolation for six months to a year. With a play, from quite early on it is collaborative, especially when the actors and director get involved.

“It changes shape because the intonation of each actor is different to the way I imagined the lines being spoken. The way they move around the stage is not how I imagined it might be. And every night in the theatre is, of course, subtly different from the night before.”

Assorted actors have played John Rebus both on stage and television, among them John Michie, who appeared in a try-out of A Game Called Malice but could not commit to a long tour this year.

Gray O’Brien, familiar to TV viewers through Casualty, Coronation Street and Peak Practice, takes on the role on the road, and Rankin is confident he will do the character justice.

Not protective of Rebus, he says each actor adds something to the role: “Every actor is going to give me a slightly different interpretation. Every actor that has played him on television, on radio, on stage has brought something new to the performance and my understanding of this complex character.

“I’ve been writing about this guy Rebus since 1985, and the first book was published in 1987. I’ve spent more than half my life with him. I still don’t quite know what makes him tick. I keep writing about him to get to the core of his identity. And so each actor helps me understand the character a little bit better.”

He missed the first week’s run of Rebus: A Game Of Malice at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on account of a  pre-arranged holiday in Greece. He will turn 65 on April 28 next year and his wife has suggested that he might consider slowing down work-wise to enable them to go travelling.

It should be noted that this is a big ask of a writer who could not resist doing some work during a recent year-long sabbatical. His wife has been booking holidays aplenty, but will she be more  successful at encouraging him to take things easy than he has been so far at killing off Rebus?

Rebus: A Game Called Malice runs at York Theatre Royal, October 15 to 19, 7.30pm plus 2pm Wednesday and Thursday and 2.30pm Saturday matinees.. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Ian Rankin’s new Rebus book, Midnight And Blue, will be published by Orion Books on October 10. 

Gray O’Brien’s Inspector John Rebus in a scene from Rebus: A Game Called Malice, directed by Loveday Ingram. Picture: Nobby Clark

Did you know?

GRAY O’Brien will be appearing at a York theatre for the second time in 2024. His role as John Rebus in Rebus: A Game Called Malice at the Theatre Royal follows his performance as Juror 10 in Twelve Angry Men at the Grand Opera House from May 13 to 18.

Scatterbrain Shaparak Khorsandi takes whirlwind tour of her ‘sometimes frantic’ mind at Scarborough, Hull and Farsley

Shaparak Khorsandi: “Letting you back into her mind after ADHD diagnosis”

AFTER reassessing her life through the prism of an ADHD diagnosis in last year’s Fringe show, ShapChat, and her Scatter Brain memoir, Shaparak Khorsandi lets you back into her mind in her new show at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre on October 2.

“Warning: it’s cluttered in there,” says the 51-year-old British Comedy Award-nominated comedian, raconteur, I’m A Celebrity contestant and author of fiction and non-fiction.

Among other things, her Scatterbrain show will be a love letter to letter-writing, a trip back through Khorsandi’s early years as a comic and woman-about-town, and a whirlwind tour of her “hilarious and sometimes frantic brain”. At least, it might be, given the promise of “delightfully shambolic” comedy.

As the tour publicity puts it: “Although it might not be remembered by Shaparak herself, that’s part of how ADHD works. And actually, we’ll probably check in with her in case she’s decided to start a career as an antique furniture expert instead.

“The diagnosis has helped Shaparak make sense of many aspects of her behaviour and personality, as movingly chronicled in Scatter Brain (subtitled How I Finally Got Off The ADHD Rollercoaster To Become The Owner Of A Very Tidy Sock Drawer, published by Penguin Books).  

“In this national tour of the same name, a woman who deserves the tag of national treasure uses her newly liberated mind as a springboard for a comedic rollercoaster ride.” 

Impatient Productions present Shaparak Khorsandi: Scatterbrain, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, October 2, 7.45pm. Box office: 01723 370541or sjt.uk.com. Khorsandi’s 23-date September 11 to December 3 tour also visits Hull Truck Theatre, October 3, 7.30pm, and Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, October 16, 8pm. Box office: Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Farsley, oldwoollen.co.uk.

Sam Lee connects with nature against the tide on songdreaming album and tour, playing The Old Woollen tonight

Sam Lee at Stonehenge. Picture: Andre Pattenden

FOLK renovator and innovator Sam Lee showcases his fourth studio album, songdreaming, at The Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, tonight, on his 17-date tour.

Released on March 15 on Cooking Vinyl, songdreaming represents the latest stage in the development of Londoner Lee’s music, from its roots in curating ancient song to a new way of imagining and performing reworked old songs, making them relevant anew.

The follow-up to 2020’s Old Wow was recorded throughout 2023, when Sam continued his work with producer Bernard Butler and long-term collaborator, arranger, and composer James Keay in creating an album rich in musicality and invention.

In taking songs directly related to the nature of the British Isles, he reinvents and contemporises a tradition of communion with the land through song. “songdreaming is a mosaic of the emotions felt in my time outdoors, that artistically emerge in reflective moments when I’m permitted to recount and articulate the complexity of all I witness and thus feel responsible for,” he says.

Explaining the album title, Sam says: “’songdreaming is a neogilism [a newly coined word or expression], that came out of the work that I do rooted in nature, through the idea of how we can connect with the land, and our relationship with nature through music. It goes back to the Aboriginal idea of songlines…”

…Songlines, Sam? “The short answer is I will never truly understand it, as you have to live in that culture, but from my time spent with Aborogines and from reading [English travel writer] Bruce Chatin’s book [Songlines], it’s to do with map orientation to our sense of not just place but ancestry, identity, sovereignty, all wrapped in feelings of adoration and commitment,” he says.

“That’s something we’ve had in this country, working with the landscape to chart who we are, but our experiences have severed that relationship. The concept of this album is to reinvigorate that idea, hence I’ve borrowed old folk songs, our ancient narratives, reworking them to tell of our beautiful relationship, our enchantment, our illicit joy, in nature.”

Illicit joy, Sam? “I’m so involved with the Right To Roam movement, but I didn’t want to make a protest album. I wanted to create a vision,” he says.

“Music can be such a bridge builder into a new sense of possibilities. I don’t think what we have in this age, unlike what we had for thousands of years, is an adoration of nature. Music was inspired by nature for so many years, and yet we’ve now become like a barren land in our attitude.

“How have we ended up with poisoned rivers, barren lands that are so depleted? Most important to that is the severance of connection to nature in our children, who find it more difficult to make that connection because of the urban lives we live.”

Sam regrets the loss of stewardship, grandparents no longer passing on knowledge of nature to grandchildren. “We don’t know the names of our rivers, our fungi, our flowers, anymore,” he says. “Nature has become an exiled realm. What we see is a war of attrition and nature is not winning that war.”

What role can music play to change that? “Where we are completely cut off, music can conjure the emotion of what it’s like to walk in a field, to be in a canoe, and that’s always been the purpose of music: to connect with the visceral sense of place. In my case, to distil all my work in nature to be something that is shared.”

Across songdreaming’s ten tracks, Sam delivers an album that ranges from acoustic songs to drone soundscapes through to the electric guitar and gospel choir-propelled lead single Meeting Is A Pleasant Place, featuring the recording debut of transgender London choir Trans Voices.

songdreaming incorporates the balladry of Sweet Girl McRee alongside the gospel tinges of Leaves Of Life, while also housing the whiteout noise of Bushes And Briars, a song that details Sam’s rage at the treatment and condition of the natural world.

Summing up his bond with nature in song, Sam says: “Those people who are and were singing the old songs here at home were also looking after the land. When we stop singing to the land, the land stops singing back.”

Sam Lee’s songdreaming tour visits  plays The Old Woollen, Sunny Bank Mills, Town Street, Farsley, Leeds, tonight (24/3/2024), 8pm; doors, 7pm. Box office: samleesong.co.uk or oldwoollen.co.uk. songdreaming is available on Cooking Vinyl on  vinyl, CD and digital download.

Sam Lee to play three Yorkshire gigs as he goes back to nature on songdreaming album, out on Cooking Vinyl on March 15

Folk musician Sam Lee at Stonehenge. Picture: Andre Pattenden

FOLK renovator Sam Lee will showcase his fourth studio album, songdreaming, on a 17-date tour with Yorkshire gigs at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on March 17, Crookes Social Club, Sheffield, on March 20 and Old Woollen, Farsley, on March 24.

Released on March 15 on Cooking Vinyl, songdreaming represents the latest stage in the development of Londoner Lee’s music, from its roots in curating ancient song to a new way of imagining and performing reworked old songs, making them relevant for a modern audience.

The follow-up to 2020’s Old Wow was recorded throughout 2023, when Lee continued his work with producer Bernard Butler and long-term collaborator, arranger, and composer James Keay in creating an album rich in musicality and invention.

songdreaming may be built on the backbone of double bass, percussion, and violin but is infused with pan-global instrumentation, taking in the Arabic Qanun, Swedish Nyckelharpa, small pipes and more.

Across the ten tracks, Lee delivers an album that ranges from more immediately identifiable acoustic songs to drone soundscapes through to the electric guitar and gospel choir-propelled lead single Meeting Is A Pleasant Place, featuring the recording debut of transgender London choir Trans Voices.

The cover artwork for Sam Lee’s new album, songdreaming

songdreaming incorporates the balladry of Sweet Girl McRee alongside the gospel tinges of Leaves Of Life, while also housing the whiteout noise of Bushes And Briars, a song that details Lee’s rage at the treatment and condition of the natural world.

In taking songs directly related to the nature of the British Isles, he continues to reinvent and contemporise a tradition of communion with the land through song. He duly characterises songdreaming as: “A mosaic of the emotions felt in my time outdoors, that artistically emerge in reflective moments when I’m permitted to recount and articulate the complexity of all I witness and thus feel responsible for”.

Taking an “evocative journey through the complex emotions created for Sam by his engagement with nature and his deep-felt affinity for it”, the album draws on sources as diverse as the sacred music of European and global mystic traditions, the work of neo-classical contemporary composers and the simple effectiveness of a well-delivered vocal melody.

Summing up his connection with nature in song, Lee says: “Those people who are and were singing the old songs here at home were also looking after the land. When we stop singing to the land, the land stops singing back.”

Tour tickets are on sale samleesong.co.uk. songdreaming will be released on Cooking Vinyl on March 15 on vinyl, CD and digital download. Pre-order link: https://SLee.lnk.to/songdreamingPR

Why folk musician Grace Petrie has put down the guitar to take up stand-up comedy in Butch Ado About Nothing. UPDATED & EXTENDED 15/9/2023

Suits you, ‘”sir”: Grace Petrie in Butch Ado About Nothing, her debut stand-up comedy show

FOLK singer, lesbian and checked-shirt collector Grace Petrie has been incorrectly called “Sir” every day of her adult life, she says.

Now, after finally running out of subject matter for her “whiny songs”, she is putting down the guitar at the age of 36 to work out why in her debut stand-up show, Butch Ado About Nothing, as she returns to The Crescent in York on September 17.

Before then, her tour brings Grace to Old Woollen, in Farsley, Leeds, tonight (31/8/2023) and The Leadmill, Sheffield, on September 10.

“I’m definitely out of my comfort zone. Check in with me before the first show for how my nerves are!” she said on the eve of the tour kicking off. “The great thing with songs is that whether they’re good or not, people will clap, but if they don’t find a joke funny, they won’t laugh.

“I have to be honest and say that I’m bricking it much more than with my folk gigs, but it’s good to challenge myself.”

What’s more, Grace has “had a front-row seat for a masterclass in comedy”, from supporting comedians on tour. “I’ve learnt to develop that between-song patter, which I came to enjoy, and as those introductions got longer and longer, I thought, ‘well, I better put my money where my mouth is’ [by doing stand-up].

“Billy Bragg is a huge inspiration, and so was Billy Connolly, who set out to be a folk musician. Victoria Wood too.”

Finding herself mired in an age of incessantly and increasingly fraught gender politics, the Norwich-based Leicester native set about exploring what butch identity means in a world moving beyond labels, pondering where both that identity and she belong in the new frontline of queer liberation.

“I first did the show at the Edinburgh Fringe last year and was really passionate that I wanted to do it in a different way, with no music, over a month of shows,” says Grace.

“I’ve been writing in the months since then because of the need to update it, though it’s basically an autobiographical show, so I guess the bare bones don’t change as it’s about my experiences as a butch woman moving in a patriarchal world and how it treats women who don’t fit into that world.”

In her suits, her hair cropped with a neat side parting, the daily occurrence of being called “Sir” troubled Grace when she was younger, but “I have got used to it,” she says. “It made a change being greeted with ‘monsieur’ at the airport when I was in Canada recently!” she says.

That put a smile on her face, and her show has been doing likewise for her audiences. “I would hope it’s a show for anybody. All kinds of people came to see it in Edinburgh, though there is the draw for queer audiences and especially butch audiences, but I’ve also had messages from straight blokes saying, ‘you gave me something to think about’,” says Grace,

“The best comedy is the comedy that stays with you and makes you think. That’s always what I want to do, whether in concerts or comedy, when you’re trying to put across ideas, you could lecture someone with facts, but if you move someone emotionally, that’s far more powerful.”

Freed from her guitar, reliant on the spoken word, Grace has found her performing style changing too after 15 years on the folk circuit in her transition to comedy. “It’s not only the voice, but also the body, and how you use it on stage, when you’re not playing the guitar,” she says.

“It’s funny how there are a million things that affect how a show will be before you’ve even set foot on stage – and it’s also been amazing how different comedy audiences are, just in terms of expectations, in terms of calling out.

“At a music show, you’re encouraging them to sing along, but at a comedy gig, noise can be derailing, so I have to think about how I use my body, how I use the microphone, and I’ve learned a huge amount being in front of audiences about to control the show.”

For the tour, Grace has chosen to play smaller rooms than she would for her concerts. “That’s deliberate, because comedy is a more intimate artform, where you need people to see your face and your mannerisms,” she reasons.

“Performing the Edinburgh shows last year, the biggest benefit was in facing my fear of doing stand-up. At the end of the day, the worst thing people can do is not laugh. That can happen and it can feel brutal, but you just have to get up and do it again. You just have to go back to the same room, the same stage, and do it again.”

John-Luke Roberts, Grace’s comedian friend, gave her a piece of advice. ” He said that making people laugh is an emotion and it’s no different to any other emotion in that way,” she says.

How Grace triggers that emotion, in a show directed by her partner, fellow performer and writer Molly Naylor, is through a combination of long-form stories and gag-heavy sections.

Over 15 years, she has enjoyed “many wonderful gigs in York”, from the smallest room at the Black Swan Inn to The Crescent and York Barbican. “I would say my favourite visit was when I did a tour of Labour marginal seats in 2019 and we did one for York Outer with York spoken-word performer Henry Raby at the Crescent,” says Grace. “That was was a really barnstorming, fist-pumping night!”

Butch Ado About Nothing presents her in a different guise on her return there, but looking ahead, she will not be putting her guitar to bed for good. Far from it. “I’ll be recording a new album in October,” she reveals.

Her transition to stand-up is not the only move that Grace has been making. “I’ve bought a house in Sheffield,” she says. “I love Sheffield! I managed one term of studying a course to do with youth work and counselling but it was a bit of Mickey Mouse degree, so I sacked it off, but got a job and stayed there for three years. Now I’m back.”

Burning Duck Comedy Club presents Grace Petrie: Butch Ado About Nothing, The Crescent, York, September 17, 7.30pm, SOLD OUT. Also plays Old Woollen, Farsley, Leeds, August 31, 8pm, and The Leadmill, Sheffield, September 10 7.30pm. Box office: gracepetrie.com; York, thecrescentyork.com; Leeds, oldwoollen.co.uk; Sheffield, leadmill.co.uk.

Grace Petrie’s trinity of checked shirt, guitar and sea

Did you know?

GRACE Petrie is a swimming enthusiast, swimming each day during last year’s Edinburgh Fringe run, for example. Her sea water publicity photos were shot at Happisburgh, on the Norfolk coast.

Did you know too?

GRACE appeared on The Guilty Feminist bill, a live offshoot from the irreverent podcast series, hosted by Deborah Frances-White at York Barbican in May 2022. Part comedy, part deep-dive discussion and part activism, the show “examined our noble goals as 21st-century feminists and our hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine those goals”.