MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
This next interview is about new crime fiction in which a building looms larger than any of the human characters. We are in London. The building is an 18-story luxury tower facing Hyde Park, so sitting on some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. And inside this building, it emerges. A murder - maybe make that plural - murders have transpired. The building and the book are named "The Heights." The author is a man better known and beloved for mysteries set in his native Scotland, which is where we find Ian Rankin today. He's on the line from Edinburgh. Ian Rankin, welcome.
IAN RANKIN: Thank you very much.
KELLY: What else do we need to know about this building, "The Heights"?
RANKIN: Well, I got the idea for this story when I was actually in a cab being driven past a building very similar to the Heights in London one night. And the only light that was visible in the whole building was the reception area on the ground floor, where a very bored security guard was sitting. And I realized nobody lived in that building. It was bought by overseas buyers as, you know, a way of keeping their money safe, not in bricks and mortar, but in steel and glass. And it got me thinking about the superrich and the kind of weirdness of this happening in one of the most populus city in the United Kingdom.
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: So that just - that got the motor going. And then I decided, who would live there? And that was a lot of fun.
KELLY: Yes. The tenants of this building include - let me attempt to list. You've got a pop star. You've got a glamorous actress. You've got a Russian oligarch, or at least oligarch-adjacent-type character. Who else? A British mobster's wife. Who am I leaving out?
RANKIN: Oh, well, I mean, there's the developer who lives in the penthouse at the top. There's the architect who designed it who lives there. There's a guy who made his fortune during COVID from selling health equipment to the government that was completely useless. There's all kinds of interesting people. There's African - the daughter of an African sort of preacher who's made a fortune in his native Africa, but she's living it up in London. Yeah, it's - all human life is there.
KELLY: And they all become suspects in one way or another. It's almost an Agatha Christie-like roster of pretty much everyone who - whether they live in this building or not, if they have a flat in this building, they at some point become a possibility for who has killed Dwayne. So let's go to the night security guard, who you said was inspired by driving past and seeing someone looking bored at the night desk.
RANKIN: Right. And the thing is, when you learn about the kinds of people who own these properties, they won't necessarily know the names of the people who do the security. They won't recognize them in the street. They're invisible to them. The people who come and do the cleaning are invisible, who take the trash away. The people who drop them off in cars and pick them up again are invisible. But that's what they're paying for. They're paying for exclusivity, they're paying for luxury, and they're paying not to need to know who the hell their neighbors are.
KELLY: Also, quite a few of your characters feel or seem to feel that they don't need to answer to the rule of law in the U.K.
RANKIN: No. I mean, it's a little bit like if you remember the TV show "Columbo." The people that he investigated were usually people of privilege and wealth. And then this guy shambles into their orbit. And they, of course, underestimate him - because they're richer than him, they must be smarter than him. And we know this. We know that so many of these elites around the world do get away with terrible things.
They are protected by the law, or they don't fear the law. They are flexible. They can be out of the country in a few minutes by private jet. So they feel untouchable. And then my detective, Gillian Gish, working-class girl, blue-collar girl from a mixed-race family, lives in a sort of not as tony a part of town, shall we say. But she's surrounded by a community. And she's got strengths that these people will never know. And, of course, they underestimate her because they look at her and they see someone far below them in the social pecking order.
KELLY: I have about 18 follow-ups, none of which I can ask you...
RANKIN: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...Without giving away the plot, quite so.
RANKIN: Yeah, don't give away the story.
KELLY: Yeah. I shall not, I shall not. Let me ask you this, though. When I introduced you, I described this book as crime fiction. It is fiction. There's a crime, in fact, quite a few crimes. Is that what you think you're writing, crime fiction?
RANKIN: Well, it has detectives in it. Therefore, it's detective fiction. But, you know, Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" has a detective in it. Is that crime fiction? There are lots of books out there that either get called literature or get called crime. I mean, I would say there's an element in this of social commentary. I mean, it's looking at the haves and have-nots and the yawning gap between them.
KELLY: As did Dickens, obviously.
RANKIN: Yeah.
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: Exactly. And what is it doing to us as a society? That's why I like people like my protester, who stands outside and just lets these people know that they've taken away his community from him and they've done something shameful and they should be embarrassed by that.
KELLY: Yeah, they kind of razed his neighborhood and forced him...
RANKIN: Yeah.
KELLY: ...And many other families out to build the Heights.
RANKIN: Yeah. People who lived there locally and grew up locally can't afford to live in that neighborhood anymore. There are plenty of places around the world where this story or stories like it are being played out.
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: Interestingly, because another book came out this year, Patrick Radden Keefe's book...
KELLY: "London Falling."
RANKIN: ..."London Falling."
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: Yeah, which has some surface similarities. And it's a young man who's a fantasist. He pretends to be an oligarch in London. He falls in with a bad crowd, and he ends up falling from a very exclusive apartment block on the banks of the Thames River. And a publisher in New York said, oh, Ian, we're bringing a book out later this year that's a little bit like yours. So I purposely did not read Patrick Radden Keefe's book until after I had completed my own, just so I wouldn't steal from him.
KELLY: You were wise, because I read both of these books in the last month. And in preparing to interview you, I thought, I hope I don't conflate the two and start asking about plot twists...
RANKIN: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...That really happened in Patrick Radden Keefe's book that were not in your book.
RANKIN: Well, of course, the thing about writing nonfiction, as Patrick Radden Keefe does, is he cannot give us an ending.
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: He can only write about what actually happened, where a fiction writer can bring it all together at the end and make it make sense.
KELLY: And make sure that the bad guys get a little bit of their comeuppance, and the reverse. So, speaking of crime fiction, your most famous enduring character is Rebus, Detective Inspector Rebus, who famously prowls the streets of Edinburgh, where you are. Why leave Scotland for London in this new mystery?
RANKIN: I mean, what I get is I get a theme I want to write about. And in this case, it was that building and the uberwealthy who live in places like that. I couldn't do that in Scotland. There is wealth, but it's quiet, secret wealth. People don't show off. And so it had to be London. If it was going to be any city in the U.K., it had to be London. And so I get the theme I want to write about, and then I find the characters I need to tell that story. So, yeah, I mean, mostly the themes I've wanted to write about could be contained in an Edinburgh setting, with Rebus as my main guy. But it was really refreshing to write about new characters in a new setting, and to introduce a character who's basically half Rebus' age.
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: My God, he's getting on for 80 years old now in the real world.
KELLY: (Laughter).
RANKIN: So she's much younger than him. And it was refreshing not to be inside this doty, grumpy old man...
KELLY: Yeah.
RANKIN: ...And be inside someone a little bit younger and fresher.
KELLY: Sir Ian Rankin talking about his latest book. How many have you written, by the way?
RANKIN: I have no idea.
KELLY: (Laughter).
RANKIN: I literally have no idea. I mean, it's maybe 40 books.
KELLY: Wow.
RANKIN: I need to count up one day. Maybe 40 books.
KELLY: You're pulling your weight in this department. Ian Rankin talking about his latest book, "The Heights." Thank you so much.
RANKIN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOMMY GUERRERO'S "BY THE SEA AT THE END OF THE WORLD") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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