The Flood by Ian Rankin, ISBN 9780752873107

> Fiction Books > Crime Books

Ian Rankin's first ever novel - unavailable for nearly twenty years and now published with a brand-new introduction . . .

In 1986, a small Scottish publishing firm released a first novel by a talented young writer. Only a few hundred copies were printed but it was a literary milestone nonetheless. The book was 'The Flood'. The author was Ian Rankin...

Mary Miller had always been an outcast. As a young girl she had fallen into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine. Fished out white-haired and half-dead, sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community. Now, years later she is hardly less alone. She is the mother of a bastard son, Sandy, and caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher. Sandy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. The search for happiness isn't easy. Both mother and son must face a dark secret from their past, in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas, glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images - of decay and regrowth, of fire and water - of the flood.

'The Flood' is both a coming-of-age novel and an amazing portrait of a time and place. Proto-Rankin as it is, it's dark, atmospheric and powerful - a remarkable debut from a remarkable author.

Unfortunately this item is either out of print or no longer available from our regular suppliers, we can no longer obtain stock of this item, and have sold out of stock in our stores. You may be interested in our similar titles below.

About the Author: Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin OBE, DL, (born 28 April 1960 in Cardenden, Fife) is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.

Rankin did not set out to be a crime writer. He thought his first novels Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek were mainstream books, more in keeping with the Scottish traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson and even Muriel Spark (the subject of Rankin's uncompleted Ph.D. thesis), and was disconcerted by their classification as genre fiction. However, he was reassured by Scottish novelist Allan Massie, who tutored Rankin while Massie was writer-in-residence at Edinburgh University, with the following words; "who would want to be a dry academic writer when "they could be John Buchan?"

Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels are mainly set in Edinburgh, and are major contributions to the Tartan Noir genre. Ten of the novels were televised on ITV, starring John Hannah as Rebus in Series 1 & 2 with Ken Stott taking on the role for Series 3-5.

Rankin stated on Radio Five Live that he would soon start work on a five- or six-issue run on the comic book Hellblazer, although the story may be turned into a standalone graphic novel instead. The Vertigo Comics panel at WonderCon 2009 confirmed that the story would be published as a graphic novel called Dark Entries, the second release from the company's new Vertigo Crime imprint.

People who purchased "The Flood by Ian Rankin" also purchased...

The Harry Bosch Novels: Volume 3	Dead Man's Grip	Holy City	A Killing in the Hills
RRP: $35.00	RRP: $32.99	RRP: $27.99	RRP: $35.00
Storm Peak: A Jesse Parker Mystery	The Last Confession	Dead Heat	The Talented Mr Ripley
RRP: $14.95	RRP: $56.95	RRP: $19.99	RRP: $19.95