Ian Rankin Interviewed on Bookslut

Sarah recommended linking to the Ian Rankin interview posted by the inimitable Bookslut this morning.

Lots of great stuff therein, but I’m especially taken with the following chunks:

The Queen, God bless her, gave me an Order of the British Empire a couple of years ago for “Services to literature.” That was important because it wasn’t services to “Genre fiction which you read on a train journey and then discard when you get to your destination.” If the Queen is starting to take crime fiction seriously, surely everybody else is going to follow suit.

And

I liked the strong sense of place that you get in crime fiction, the strong central character, the traditional storytelling with that strong sense of a beginning, a middle and an end…. I found that everything I want to say about the world I can say quite nicely in the crime genre, so why do anything else? …

Of course he’s preaching to my choir, but doing it so well that my choir’s standing on its respective auditorium seats and waving Bic lighters aloft while chanting “Freebird!”