Rebus: Long Shadows

by Ian Rankin

Genres: Police Procedurals

Synopsis

The stage debut for the legendary detective John Rebus in this brand new, original story by Ian Rankin, written alongside the award-winning playwright Rona Munro. John Rebus is not as young as he was, but his detective instincts have never left him. And after the daughter of a murder victim turns up outside his flat, he's going to need them at their sharpest. Enlisting the help of his old friend DI Siobhan Clarke, Rebus is determined to solve this cold case once and for all. But Clarke has problems of her own, problems that will put her at odds with her long-time mentor and push him into seeking help from his age-old adversary: 'Big Ger' Cafferty. This haunting story takes Rebus to places he has never been before, sets him and his long-time foe on a collision course and takes us deeper into one of the most satisfying conflicts in modern fiction. Featuring an introduction from Rankin himself, a Q&A between writers Ian and Rona, an interview with the director, and behind-the-scenes production materials, this book is one Rebus fans will not want to miss out on.

Release date: September 20, 2018

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 177

Sample

INTRODUCTION

It was theatre producer Daniel Schumann who first mooted to me the idea of putting John Rebus on the stage. I’d be lying, however, if I said the notion hadn’t crossed my mind from time to time. I’ve never been in the same room with Rebus, you see, never watched him in three dimensions as he wrestles with a problem or wrangles with his (considerable) demons. I had co-written one stage play in the recent past, Dark Road, working alongside the Lyceum Theatre’s artistic director Mark Thomson, who also happens to be a hugely talented playwright. That play was a psychodrama set in contemporary Edinburgh and featuring a senior police officer at the end of her career, looking back on the one case from her early years that had never been resolved to her satisfaction while also coping with her demanding teenage daughter.

The challenge there had been, in part, to satisfy audiences that they weren’t just watching Rebus with a sex change. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, I think I was anxious not to pen a drama about a character who had been such a large part of my writing life. I wanted to break from Rebus, to write an original story rather than an adaptation.

I’m still not one for adaptation.

Early on, as Daniel and I discussed the project, we decided that this would hopefully be an all-new story, set at a slight remove from the universe of the Rebus novels. Rona Munro’s name cropped up very early in our conversations as someone who might work in partnership to bring Rebus to the stage, and to life. I’d been a fan of Rona’s writing for many years, not least her vast undertaking for the National Theatre of Scotland, The James Plays. I was really keen for her ‘take’ on Rebus. At our first meeting, she stressed that the story ahead of us would have to be one that could only be told by means of a stage play. We wanted something that would satisfy fans of the books, but also work on its own merits for theatregoers not acquainted with the characters.

We met for long brain-storming sessions in my living-room, fuelled by hot drinks and the occasional lunch at a nearby bistro. We talked about Rebus, about what sort of man he was and how he had become that man. We analysed Cafferty and Cafferty’s relationship with Rebus. And Rebus’s relationship with Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke. We also touched on the city which surrounded all three, Edinburgh, a city with its own secrets and foibles and ghosts. Rebus, of course, has always been a haunted man – haunted by victims, by unsolved cases, by his inability to deal satisfactorily with his nemesis Cafferty. But haunted, too, by his own self-perceived failings as husband, father and friend.

The play we were feeling our way towards – Long Shadows – would be a character study, a whodunit, and a piece of choreography in which the central trio dance around each other as allegiances shift and hidden truths eventually reach the spotlight.

Talking, of course, is one thing, creating quite another.

Having workshopped ideas and even storyboarded the arc, much of the hard work then fell to Rona. She knows only too well what works and doesn’t work on a stage. As a novelist, I can shovel into a book all the pages, scene-changes and characters I need. This is impossible to replicate on the stage. Rona had to take my story and make it work within a very tight framework. Drafts began to bounce between us, as difficulties emerged and were dealt with, problems and niggles ironed out. But the real heart of the play didn’t change much. There stood Rebus and Cafferty, two men of advanced years whose world is no longer what it was. Faced by change and decay in all they see, their empathy is matched only by their antipathy. They understand one another – might even actually respect certain aspects of one another – and yet each would gladly take the other down. Indeed, no other ending would seem satisfactory.

This was another decision that we took early on: the play would feature the ‘older’ Rebus, the one readers of today have got to know. I began the series when I was twenty-five and Rebus was forty. He is now in his mid-sixties, retired, and yet unable to slough off the skin of the detective he once and for so long was. He has an itch, too, represented by Cafferty – the one who got away. Cafferty stands for every villain Rebus has encountered, every act of unfeeling cruelty fuelled by greed and anger. While Rebus seethes quietly in his tenement flat, music and alcohol keeping him company, Cafferty keeps watch over the city from his penthouse eyrie, fearful that all he has gained can still be snatched from him if he makes one single mistake.

All of this will be familiar to readers of the novels, but incidents and characters occur in Long Shadows which won’t be found in the books. We have played with elements of Rebus’s history – and Cafferty’s – to make for an engrossing two hours of theatre, even if it means stepping out of the universe of the books into a parallel world that is almost identical. I agreed wholeheartedly with Rona that the play had to work within its own system and on its own merits. Over the course of our collaboration she dug deep into the characters’ psyches and motivations, making me consider difficult questions and bringing me to a more rounded understanding of the interior lives of Rebus, Cafferty and Siobhan Clarke. I have said in the past that I keep writing about Rebus because I haven’t got to the heart of what makes him tick. Working with Rona took me closer than ever before.

One thing I know from my previous play, however, is that the writing is only one part of the whole. As I pen these words, rehearsals have yet to start. The main casting has been done, but minor roles remain to be filled. I have not seen the stage design or the costumes, nor heard the actors speak the lines. In rehearsal, the lines begin to lift from the page and take flight, becoming closer to music than to ink. They flit around the actors until the actors begin to fade and become the characters themselves. It’s a magical process. And when rehearsals are done and the action shifts to the stage, scenery completed, lighting devised, music ready . . . Well, that’s when Long Shadows truly becomes a thing in itself, independent of the authors who were there at its conception.

Rebus has cast a long shadow in the thirty years since he sprang to life between the pages of that first adventure, Knots and Crosses. He seems, however, more fully alive to me with each passing year and in each new episode of his career. He is complex, stubborn, intelligent, driven, and hard-edged. And in Long Shadows he . . .