Inspector Rebus

The Inspector Rebus books are a series of detective novels by the Scottish author Ian Rankin. The novels, centred around the title character Detective Inspector John Rebus, are mostly based in and around Edinburgh.

Publishing history

The Inspector Rebus series is extremely popular, accounting for 10% of all crime book sales in the UK. The books now routinely sell half a million copies within the first three months of printing, and have been translated into 26 languages. They are currently published in the UK by the Orion Publishing Group. Currently seventeen full novels have been written. The seventeenth is possibly the last as Rebus will turn sixty, the age of retirement for CID officers. The 17th book, Exit Music will be released on the 6th of September.

Ian Rankin announces the title of the final Rebus novel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Books

1. Knots and Crosses (1987)
2. Hide and Seek (1991)
3. Tooth and Nail (original title Wolfman) (1992)
4. Strip Jack (1992)
5. The Black Book (1993)
6. Mortal Causes (1994)
7. Let it Bleed (1996)
8. Black and Blue (1997)
9. The Hanging Garden (1998)
10. Dead Souls (1999)
11. Set in Darkness (2000)
12. The Falls (2001)
13. Resurrection Men (2002)
14. A Question of Blood (2003)
15. Fleshmarket Close (published in the USA as Fleshmarket Alley) (2004)
16. The Naming of the Dead (2006)
17. Exit Music (2007)

Short stories

• 'A Good Hanging' and Other Stories (1992) - short stories
• Death is not the End (1998) - novella
• Beggars Banquet (2002) - short stories (includes seven Rebus stories and Death is not the End)
• Tell Me Who To Kill (2003) - short story, first published in Mysterious Pleasures, a collection celebrating fifty years of the Crime Writers' Association
• Atonement (2005) - short story, first published in The Complete Short Stories

Collections

• Rebus - The Early Years [Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, Tooth and Nail]
• Rebus - The St. Leonards Years [Strip Jack, The Black Book, Mortal Causes]
• Rebus - The Lost Years [Let it Bleed, Black and Blue, The Hanging Garden]
• Rebus - Capital Crimes [Dead Souls, Set in Darkness, The Falls]
• The Complete Short Stories ['A Good Hanging' and Other Stories, Beggars Banquet, Atonement]

Also

• Rebus's Scotland - A Personal Journey.

Audiobooks

All of the Rebus novels are available as audiobooks. It seems some books have been narrated by more than one Author, probably for different markets. Narrators include:

• James MacPherson
• Jamie Glover
• Bill Paterson (The Black Book, Hide and Seek)
• Samuel Gillies (Strip Jack, Set in Darkness, Tooth and Nail, Let It Bleed, The Falls, Beggar's Banquet)
• Roger Allam
• Joe Dunlop (Dead Souls, Resurrection Men)
• James Frain
• David Rintoul (Mortal Causes)
• Tom Cotcher (A Question of Blood, Fleshmarket Close, The Naming of the Dead)
• Michael Page (A Question of Blood, Fleshmarket Alley (Close))

Three of the novels have won Spoken Word Awards: Strip Jack (Gold), A Question of Blood and Resurrection Men (Silver).

An innovative new design, the illustrated audiobook was created for Rebus's Scotland (the CD box contains a 32 page booklet containing photographs from the book.

Television adaptations

For main article, see Rebus (TV series)

Ten of the novels have been dramatised between 2000 and 2006 for television as three series of Rebus starring John Hannah and Ken Stott.

Content and style

The books are written in third person limited omniscient mode, focusing on Rebus, with the point of view sometimes shifting to colleagues, petty criminals or suspects. The stories belong to the genre of police procedural detective fiction, with a hardboiled aspect that has led to them being dubbed 'Tartan Noir'.

All the novels involve murders, suspicious deaths or disappearances, with Rebus taking on the task of solving the mystery. The resulting investigation (or investigations) depict a stark, uncompromising picture of Scotland, characterised by corruption, poverty, and organised crime. Along the way, Rebus has to struggle with internal police politics, a struggle exacerbated by his tendency to bend the rules and ignore his superiors. He also has to deal with his own personal issues, which are often directly or indirectly related to the current investigation, risking further friction with his colleagues.

Rankin has won critical praise for his elaborate and inventive plots. In particular, the later books have multiple plotlines encompassing dozens of distinctive characters and locations. These span a broad spectrum of Scotland, including council estates, tenements, business districts, nightclubs, prisons, dying mining towns, secluded villages and desolate hillsides, as well as the better-known pubs and streets of Edinburgh. Some of these locations are fictional, although they may be based on real places. For example, the Pilmuir estate is a conflation of the two real Edinburgh locations Pilton and Muirhouse. Other locations, such as the Oxford Bar, Arden Street or St Leonards Police Station, are real. Frequent references to real places, or local politics firmly ground the Rebus series in the real world.

Another strong feature of the series is the continual linking between the books. This may be in reference to background, previous cases and storylines, or through the characters Rebus encounters, for example, the notorious Edinburgh crime-lord 'Big Ger' Cafferty. However, Rankin does this in such a way that reading them in order, or a prior knowledge of the Rebus 'history' isn't required. Everything is explained in enough detail in order not to confuse new readers, but does not become repetitive for extensive readers of the series.

Recurring Characters

• Detective Inspector John Rebus
• Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke
• Detective Chief Inspector Gill Templer
• Morris Gerald 'Big Ger' Cafferty

See also

• Lothian and Borders Police
• Areas of Edinburgh

External links

• Ian Rankin
• Rebus and Rankin at Scotsman.com
• Undiscovered Scotland Entry
• Rampant Scotland Article
• The Oxford bar
• Unofficial Oxford Bar Forum
• RebusOnline fan club site