Authenticating a Community: Exploring Scottish Conflicts in Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin

Abstract

Crime fiction is explored here as a distinctively authentic Scottish genre, a label which contemporary writers generally refuse. The text looks at the nature of the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Scotland as it features in Ian Rankin´s crime story Mortal Causes. Rather than making hasty conclusions derived from the history of mutual violence, Rankin presents his modern and, as he claims, authentic version of the sectarian conflict as a part of local identity. At the same time, Rankin´s protagonist remains carefully “sitting on the fence” making sure that neither side of the conflict is his own. The text argues that it is Rebus´s in-betweenness which makes him a typical representative of his community. The paper was supported by the Czech Science Foundation grant GA CR 19-02634S.