It could be a plot straight from a Rebus novel, involving a psychopathic serial killer driven by a warped sense of religion, but even Ian Rankin cannot take credit for what is likely to be his most sinister work.

The crime writer has revealed he is working on a screenplay for one of Scotland's darkest and most challenging literary masterpieces: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg.

The 18th-century work is regarded as one of the most influential texts published in Scotland. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie are among the classic novels that Hogg's work helped to inspire.

Rankin, who has been working on the project with a friend for about two months, told The Times: “It is a wee project we are working on because we like the book. We've got some development money, a producer and a director who is interested. People have tried to develop it for a film and found it impossible, but we thought, nil desperandum, let's give it a go.”

The Private Memoir was published in 1824. Set in 18th century Edinburgh, it features a young man, Robert Wringham, and his encounters with a devilish doppelganger known as Gil-martin. After being told that he is one of the Elect, a group of people predestined for salvation, he starts to believe that he cannot be punished and is coerced by Gil-martin into carrying out a string of murders, including killing his own half-brother.

The novel is viewed as an important text for its depiction of 18th-century life in Edinburgh and its coruscating examination of religious ideology.

Hogg, who wrote it in his 50s, had barely read a book until he was in his 20s as his family's poverty had forced him out of school and onto their sheep farm. He became known as the Ettrick Shepherd.

Rankin described Hogg's book as the “classic unread Scottish novel”. He hopes that adapting the film will bring it to a greater audience, and believes it has contemporary relevance.

"There are interesting parallels between when the book is set and now," he said. "It takes place at a time of political unrest when Scotland is entering a union with England, and its main character is a religious zealot that kills people who do not agree with his faith."

Rankin was speaking as he returned to St Andrews University, his alma mater, to open its new museum yesterday.

The £2 million building at Scotland's oldest university will preserve and display some of the university's oldest and most significant artefacts. These include three medieval maces, paintings medals and rare books. It will also display life masks of Burke and Hare, the notorious 19th century killers who made a living by selling the corpses of their victims to medical research.

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