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Music To Die For: a three-part radio series in which Inspector Rebus’s creator Ian Rankin talks to other crime writers about their passion for music and the way they use it in their books.


Music to die for - Taster with James Lee Burke

Music to die for - Episode 1
1: Ian Rankin introduces best-selling, award-winning crime novelists Mark Billingham, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Joolz Denby, John Harvey, George Pelecanos, James Sallis, and Karin Slaughter.
The first of three programmes ponders whether and why the use of music in crime fiction is a recent phenomenon, wonders what a taste for different forms of music tell the reader about their fictional heroes, explains why country-loving detectives should steer clear of more modern music trends, offers a guided tour of Elvis Cole’s Los Angeles with his creator Robert Crais, and provides a rare opportunity to hear Hawkwind, Tupac Shakur and Wang Chung in the same half-hour.



Music to die for - Episode 2
2: Ian Rankin introduces best-selling, award-winning crime novelists Mark Billingham, James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Robert Crais, Joolz Denby, John Harvey, and Karin Slaughter, as well as Scottish singer-songwriter Jackie Leven and former Police guitarist Andy Summers.
In the second of three programmes, Ian explains why he had to abandon Inspector Rebus’s early enthusiasm for jazz, discusses with fellow authors the pros and cons of quoting song lyrics, meets the creator of a Charlie Parker who is deaf to jazz, hears Phil Collins proposed as a tool for gangland torturers, finds out about feedback from readers, and winds up with a night out in Kirkcaldy.
Music to die for - Episode 3
3: Ian Rankin introduces best-selling, award-winning crime novelists Mark Billingham, James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Joolz Denby, John Harvey, George Pelecanos, James Sallis, and Karin Slaughter.
The final programme features writers who work with music on and writers who can’t; writers who can play an instrument and writers who can’t, but have still been in a band; writers who are poets and what poetry’s rhythms bring to their prose; and writers who have released CDs of their detective’s favourite records. It also points out the connection between Inspector Rebus and ‘sixth Stone’ Ian Stewart, and asks the key question: Is this obsession with music just a blokey thing?