> Rankin's got a web site up at
>
> http://www.ianrankin.com/
>
> It says he won the Chandler-Fulbright scholarship in
1992 and he used the
> money to travel around the US. Does anyone know more
about this
> scholarship?
Yes, it was a scholarship for crime writers - one year it
would be for a British writer to spend a year in the US then
the next year for an American to come to Britain. It ran for
five or six years I think. The last British winner was Denise
Danks (the last American winner was Larry Beinhart - anyone
know what happened to him post Wag The Dog?) and I think
there was a sense that the British writers in particular saw
the award as a chance to take a free holiday rather than a
serious academic post, so the award was discontinued.
As for Ian Rankin. Black and Blue certainly marked the point
at which the series came to life, with Rankin consciously
using the influence of Ellroy - both stylistically and
thematically - to liven up a rather dour series that
previously seemed too much in the shadow of both the TV
series Taggart and, the great underrated Scottish noir
writer, William McIlvanney (whose excellent Laidlaw novels
were of course the uncredited source for Taggart).
John
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