It was a delightful hour with author and interviewer both totally relaxed on stage, pretty surprising given that Rankin had only arrived three hours before on on flights from the UK via Dhubai and Brisbane.
Rankin has a substantial and dedicated following in New Zealand with his somewhat grumpy, cigarette smoking, single malt drinking, divorcee cop John Rebus being one of our most popular crime fiction cops.
Rankin is in New Zealand to promote his just published Standing In Another Man's Grave and judging by the lengthy queue of fans waiting to get their copies signed by the much admired author the publishers will be happy with the opening event of the tour.
Rankin kept the large audience in raptures with his talk of Rebus and of the Edinburgh setting where he uses real pubs, real police stations, where people live in real and current time. This made for problems when Rebus reached 60 years of age and had to retire. But now because of a change in the law allowing formerly retired Scots policemen to rejoin and work up to the age of 65 Rebus has applied to rejoin.Let us hope there are many more Rebus stories to follow. This new one is a cracker about which I will have more to say in a later post.
A wonderfully entertaining event organised so ably as always by the Takapuna Public Library and the energetic librarian Helen Woodhouse assisted by Sarah Thornton, who has accepted the role of events organiser for the North Shore Libraries’ Foundation events – the big events organized off site from the Takapuna Library.
1 comment:
It was a remarkably relaxed conversation, wasn't it? Craig has the ability to draw out fresh and interesting insights from his subjects and makes the audience feel as if they're hearing good friends chat to each other. I'd love to drop into Ian's local and find him sitting out the back!
Post a Comment