Ian Rankin Ian Rankin Keep up to date with Ian by signing up to receive his email newsletter. Please enter your email address in the box below. Subscribe Ian Rankin marks the 30th anniversary of John Rebus 2017 marks the thirtieth anniversary of one of crime fiction’s greatest characters View All Newsletter Keep up to date with Ian by signing up to receive his email newsletter or view older letters in our online newsletter archive. Subscribe Characters John Rebus Rebus is a professional misanthrope made more cynical by the job he does. A flawed, pessimistic, multi-layered character, he delights in flouting authority; he smokes and drinks; he doesn’t play by the rules. Full Profile “Big Ger” Cafferty The gangster who runs Edinburgh, and Rebus’s chief adversary, Cafferty runs a criminal organisation that uses intimidation, bribery and murder to deliver what he wants. Full Profile Malcom Fox Complaints Officer Fox is hardworking and pernickety; a team player, not cynical like Rebus, and not a drinker.

Long teetotal, he is an interesting character who is somewhat repressed Full Profile Siobhan Clarke Siobhan plays by the rules; she’s young and ambitious and she embraces the new techniques of policing. She is the perfect foil to Rebus, and the two develop a grudging respect and friendship. John Rebus - Ian Rankin Ian Rankin Keep up to date with Ian by signing up to receive his email newsletter. Please enter your email address in the box below. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! John Rebus ‘It’s happened. An idea for a novel that started as one situation and has blossomed into a whole plot. I’ve not written any of it yet, but it’s all there in my head from page one to circa page 250’ (Ian writing in his diary 19th March 1985) The character of Detective John Rebus – complete with estranged wife, young daughter and fragile sanity – seemed to spring fully formed from young English Literature graduate Ian Rankin as he sat in his bedsit in Arden Street, Edinburgh in March 1985.

The book’s title Knots & Crosses came first, with the detective’s name coming out of that ‘picture puzzle’ of knotted rope and matchstick crosses of the title. Oxford had ‘Morse’ – a code, so Edinburgh would have ‘Rebus’ – a puzzle. Knots & Crosses was not intended to grow into a series. In the first draft Rebus died at the end: but during the editing process Rankin decided to give him a reprieve. This was just as well, as when sales of standalone novels Watchman and Westwind were slow, his publisher suggested he revive the detective, who reappeared in Hide & Seek . The word ‘curmudgeon’ could have been invented for Rebus. The flawed but humane detective we first meet in Knots & Crosses when he’s aged 40 is pretty much the character we see even in the most recent books when Rebus flirts with retirement before returning to the police force when the rules change. Rebus is a professional misanthrope made more cynical by the job he does. He delights in flouting authority; he smokes and drinks; he doesn’t play by the rules.

He is the ultimate maverick cop who prefers ‘old-school’ graft to new-fangled modern-day policing methods. He’s a flawed, pessimistic, multi-layered character, a troubled, brooding soul and a cynical loner who can find no solace in faith, who’s obsessed with work, and happiest when propping up the bar of his favourite pub, The Oxford Bar, a glass of IPA in his hand. The older Rebus has a bit more flesh on the bones – both literally and metaphorically; he is a little more disillusioned, and fighting a few more demons – and not quoting quite so much Walt Whitman or Dostoevsky. The Rebus novels are written in real time, so Rebus ages along with each book. As the series progresses we learn more about him. Born in 1947, Rebus grew up in Cardenden, Fife, with his brother Michael, the sons of a stage hypnotist and grandsons of a Polish immigrant. Rebus left school at aged 15 to join the army whilst his brother followed in their father’s footsteps.

Rebus served in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, before being selected for the SAS in 1971 where he excelled in training but he left the army shortly afterwards, which brought on a nervous breakdown. Following lobbying from the army, Rebus joined the Lothian and Borders Police in 1973. Rebus has been married, but divorced sometime in the 1980s. His ex-wife, Rhona, and his daughter, Samantha, appear frequently in the early novels. We first meet Rebus in 1987 in Knots & Crosses when he is a Detective Sergeant working on the case of the Edinburgh Strangler, a serial killer who had been abducting and strangling young girls. He is based at the (fictional) Waverley Road police station where he receives anonymous letters containing knotted rope and matchstick crosses… Ian Rankin to bring back Inspector Rebus character - The Scotsman Ian Rankin to bring back Inspector Rebus character Ian Rankin is to revive Rebus.

Picture: TSPL MARTYN McLAUGHLIN 12:59 Wednesday 28 January 2015 01:12 Thursday 29 January 2015 Have your say LINE up a Scotch in the Oxford Bar and break the news gently to the chief constable - one of Scotland’s best loved fictional characters is to prowl the streets of Auld Reekie once again. In news that will delight his millions of fans, author Ian Rankin has confirmed that his maverick detective John Rebus is to return in a new novel. Picture: ITV The Edinburgh writer is currently developing the plot for what will be the 19th instalment in a series that began nearly 30 years ago with the publication of Knots and Crosses. With Rankin back behind his desk after a self-imposed 12 month hiatus from writing, there were fears among his loyal fanbase that his downtrodden, ill-tempered protagonist would not return with him in the form of a full-length novel. But Rankin has subtly reassured his readers that Rebus is not yet ready for retired life, and will star in the as yet untitled work.

Last year, the 54-year-old published The Beat Goes On, a complete collection of his short stories featuring Detective Inspector Rebus, a project he now intends to follow up with his next novel. The revelation emerged in a series of conversations on Twitter, of which Rankin is a prolific user. • Ian Rankin: Rebus ‘changed’ by Police Scotland Mulling over the preparatory writing process, he tweeted: “So much *plot* in this new book I’m doing, I’m having to focus on that so it doesn’t wriggle away from me. Character/nuance/etc for later.” One of his followers, Claire Wright, asked the question that other readers were no doubt thinking, tweeting back: “Dare I ask if it is a Rebus?” The response gave little in the way of detail, but it gave an unequivocal answer. “Yes,” Rankin replied. Even so, another two of the author’s followers sought confirmation that Rebus was indeed coming back. Both times, Rankin confirmed the news, adding that the new novel would be set in the familiar streets of Edinburgh that have been well trodden by Rebus over the years.

• Ian Rankin to revive Inspector Rebus He later added: “Once I know plot works, I can go back and fix/polish everything else. That’s the plan for now.” One follower, teacher Ross McLaren wrote: “You sir, despite the 143 prelims I have to mark, have made my night!” Another, Steve Sherburn, tweeted: “Excellent.” The details of Rankin’s next book suggest that, after much soul searching, he has struck upon a way of revisiting his most enduring character. He previously took a five-year break from the ageing police officer after the publication of 2007’s Exit Music, eventually releasing Standing in Another Man’s Grave. In an interview last month, Rankin suggested Rebus would make a comeback but admitted he was struggling with how to make it happen. He said: “He’s a year older, I’ve got to think what the hell I can do with him as he rapidly becomes an old man; what can I do with him realistically.

“I did retire him for five years, I didn’t write about him, but he never quite left my head; he refused to leave and when I did find a story I thought was perfect for him, I found a way to bring him back. “He’s just one of these characters that I can’t stop writing about and I don’t know why. But I have to ask if he’s the best possible character now for the story I want to tell.” Rankin added: “I’m still finding out about him even now after, God, I don’t know how many years I’ve been writing about him. The first book was written in 1985. What is that? Jesus, I don’t even want to think about it, that’s 30 years. “He continues to surprise me, he’s still a useful tool for finding things out about the world, a means of investigating the world around us. I’ve tried to get rid of him but he wormed his way back in again. “At some point the clock will catch up with him I guess.” FOLLOW US Order of Ian Rankin Books - OrderOfBooks.com Home | Characters | Authors Order of Ian Rankin Books Ian Rankin is a Scottish author of crime fiction.

Rankin’s goal in life was not always to write crime fiction. He originally thought he would be compared to the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson rather than to be considered part of the Tartan Noir genre. He is best known for his Inspector Rebus novels, which are set in Edinburgh. Many of the books have been adapted to a television series on the British channel ITV, starring John Hannah and later Ken Stott as Inspector Rebus. Ian Rankin became a published author in 1986 when The Flood was released. His next novel, Knots and Crosses was the beginning of the Inspector Rebus character. Since then, most of his work has been in the Rebus series, although he has also written some standalone books and a new series featuring Malcolm Fox.

Below is a list of all of Ian Rankin’s novels in publication order and in chronological order (when necessary): Publication Order of Inspector Rebus Books Knots and Crosses Ian Rankin | Scottish author | Britannica.com Scottish author Alternative Titles: Ian James Rankin, Jack Harvey Ian Rankin Josephine Tey Ian Rankin, in full Ian James Rankin, pseudonym Jack Harvey (born April 28, 1960, Cardenden, Fife , Scotland ), Scottish best-selling crime novelist, creator of the Inspector Rebus series. (For Rankin’s reflections on the Scottish capital, see Edinburgh: A City of Stories .) Ian Rankin, 2007. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images Rankin grew up in a small coal-mining town, where at a young age he displayed a talent for writing poetry. He studied English literature at the University of Edinburgh , receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1982. While working on a never-finished Ph.D. in Scottish literature , he began writing the story that would become his first novel , The Flood (1986). It was published by a student-run press in Edinburgh .

Set in a small town based on Rankin’s own birthplace, the debut was an exploration of the prejudices and superstitions of a fading community as reflected in its casting out of a young townswoman believed to be a witch. The following year Rankin’s earliest crime novel, Knots & Crosses, introduced the character Inspector John Rebus, a rough-edged former military man serving in Scotland’s territorial police force. Rankin, who claimed to have had no intention of being a genre novelist, strayed for several years afterward from depicting what would become his most popular character, writing two unrelated novels in the interim . In 1990 he released his second book featuring the inspector. Rebus’s career would continue to unfold over two decades, culminating with his retirement in Exit Music (2007). Though Rankin maintained at the time that it was to be the last novel in the series, the superannuated Rebus was on the case again in Standing in Another Man’s Grave (2012), Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013), and Even Dogs in the Wild (2016). The series gave Rankin an opportunity to depict Scotland, in particular Edinburgh, in high, often bloody colour.

Through the authority-flouting inspector’s investigations, which played out in classic police-procedure style, the capital city emerges as a vibrant textured place, filled with secretive corners and strange historical echoes. The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Short Stories (2014) collected his short fiction featuring the hard-bitten inspector. In addition to his Rebus books, Rankin wrote a handful of thrillers under the name Jack Harvey between 1993 and 1995. In 1997 the eighth Inspector Rebus novel, Black and Blue, became Rankin’s first international best seller. Inspired by the case of an unidentified serial killer thought to have operated in Glasgow in the 1960s, the work was also the basis of the first episode of the Rankin-penned Rebus, a 14-part television program based on the book series that aired in the United Kingdom in 2000–07.

Other novels he wrote following the reported retirement of the Inspector Rebus character included The Complaints (2009), which featured another Scottish cop protagonist, Malcolm Fox, and Dark Entries (2009), a graphic novel centring on an occult detective’s investigation of a haunted reality television show set. Britannica Stories Interview | Ian Rankin Being Ian Rankin has become hard work. Between dashing about on international publicity tours, speaking before crime writers' associations and struggling with a three-part BBC-TV cop drama (set in a fictional fishing community north of Aberdeen, Scotland), the author finds less and less free time nowadays to devote to the continuing adventures of Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus. However, it's his Rebus books -- the newest of which, Set In Darkness, is due out in Great Britain in February -- that have brought Rankin, at just under 40 years of age, extraordinary acclaim. On both sides of the Atlantic.

American novelist James Ellroy calls Rankin the "King of Tartan Noir," a clever credit that rivals Michael Connelly 's commendation of him as "up there among the best crime novelists at work today." In the United Kingdom, Rankin's novels are guaranteed bestsellers, on a par with the works of better-known mega-authors such as John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell. The British Crime Writers Association has presented him with two CWA Daggers for his short stories, and in 1997 Rankin won the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger Award for Fiction for his eighth Rebus novel, Black and Blue. That same book was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel in the United States, and a TV version of Black and Blue, starring John Hannah (familiar from roles in such films as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Mummy), is due for broadcast in the UK this spring. For Rankin, these plaudits are a recognition of how far he's come. But they're also an endorsement of his early vision that Scottish fiction could find an enthusiastic readership well beyond his homeland of clans and castles.

Born in Cardenden, Fife, in the Scottish Lowlands, Rankin went on to hold a variety of jobs (swineherd and alcohol researcher being only two of the more colorful ones), sing in a short-lived punk band called The Dancing Pigs, earn a degree from Edinburgh University in English Literature (specializing in American Lit), study toward a Ph.D. in Scottish Literature and finally make the leap into prose writing. One of his short stories "raged out of control," as Rankin explains it, and became his first book, The Flood (1986). By 1990 he had become a full-time novelist. What makes Rankin's Rebus tales so appealing is their distinctly unappealing main protagonist. John Rebus is cynical, antisocial and full of barely repressed anger, a cop who harbors animosities and makes terrible blunders out of impatience. Yet he is also an attentive observer and a relentless investigator who eventually manages to restore order to the frequent disorder that rules Edinburgh's medieval-flavored streets.

While his early escapades established Rebus' character, as well as Rankin's dour perspective on Scotland's capital, it was Black and Blue -- which sent the inspector after a copycat serial killer -- that seemed finally to establish Rebus as one of this genre's most distinctive and memorable figures. Rankin's two subsequent books -- The Hanging Garden (which found Rebus on the paper trail of a war criminal) and Dead Souls (in which he alternately hounded a pedophile and a murderer, both brought back to his patch) -- burnished his reputation. Set In Darkness (involving the new Scottish Parliament and 20-year-old secrets) will likely be equally well received. During his recent self-promotional swing through the States, I had the chance to talk with Rankin about his early writing, some of the odd coincidences that have accompanied his books and, yes, even his history as a suspect in a kidnap-murder investigation. J. Kingston Pierce: I've heard not only that you didn't set out to be a crime novelist, but that as a boy in Cardenden, you didn't even have a bookstore at which you might have been exposed to this sort of fiction.

Ian Rankin: No, but we did have a small library, which was funded by the local coal miners. The coal miners funded everything, you know. They funded the public swimming pool, they funded the sports center and the library. It was a nice little library, but the nearest bookstore was six, seven miles away. Whenever you've talked about Cardenden in the past, you've made it sound like such a lonely place. Was it? We used to call it "Car-dead-end," if that gives you the picture. But the place did kind of prime me for writing, because in the 1960s, when the Scottish coal mines all closed out for economic reasons, and even as a 6- year-old you could see the hope seeping out of the town, I found escape through my imagination. I tried to create a better world in my mind, a world in which Cardenden was a kind of exciting place to be. I was always an obsessive sort of kid, and I just took my imagination to extremes, you know. I used to write stories and make up comic books and stuff like that, anything to vent my imagination.

It wasn't enough just to read comic books, I had to make up my own, complete with stick men and speech bubbles. I made up a pop music group called Kaput, after the lead singer Ian Kaput, and in the comics I created a whole world around them, an alternate universe where they were always number one [on the hit charts] and they went on tour. And I even wrote song lyrics for them. How many of these comic books did you develop? Quite a few, but they're all gone now, I'm afraid. They were chucked out somewhere along the line. So nobody's going to find them someday and publish them as the pubescent scribblings of a now-famous wordsmith? Oh, Jesus, no. Thankfully. Actually, there's a guy I used to know in Edinburgh, who now lives in New York City. I had lunch with him when I was there recently, and he said, "I think I've still got some of those early student magazines that put your poetry in them." I said, "I'll give you money for them. Just give them to me. Or just burn them." I don't want any of that stuff coming out.

[Laughs] You actually thought you were going to be a poet when you were a young teenager, didn't you? Well, the first things I wrote were the song lyrics for that nonexistent band. Then when a poetry competition came along at school, I thought: Well, I write song lyrics; that's poetry, isn't it? So I stuck a poem into the contest, called "Euthanasia" -- and it won second prize. So by the time I left [the local comprehensive] school and went to university, I was already a published poet: I'd had one poem published in a magazine. Where along the line did you discover crime fiction? It came from my interest in American novels. From a young age, I had a real interest in American fiction. This was partly inspired by the movies. See, while I was too young to get into R-rated movies, like The Godfather or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or A Clockwork Orange, even at ages 11 or 12 nobody stopped me buying the books on which those movies were based. So I was finding a sideways or sneaky way to experience all of these intriguing stories, and loving them.

I got into the Shaft books, too -- my introduction to detective fiction. I loved those books. The Shaft books? You mean that series of novels (beginning with Shaft, 1970) that Ernest Tidyman wrote about John Shaft, the gun-toting black private eye from New York? The same character who inspired the Richard Roundtree movies and short-lived TV series? That was certainly an unusual entry into this genre. Yeah, but I'd bought the pop record, the soundtrack to the original [1971] movie Shaft, and I thought that was terrific. And then I couldn't get in to see the film -- I wasn't 18 yet. So I bought the first Shaft book, and then the second film came out and the book came out with that, so I bought it, too. I kept up with Shaft long after the series was past its sell-by date. Are you, then, looking forward to the new Shaft film? No, really? Are they making a new movie? I think it's supposed to be called Shaft Returns, with Samuel L. Jackson starring as "the private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks." It's due out later this year. Oh, dear.

Well, you know [singer/musician] Isaac Hayes is hip again. So why not? But it's sad, really. 'Cuz those stories were kind of "blaxploitation." Ernest Tidyman was a white writer, and I don't think he had his finger on the real pulse of what was happening in the black world. Shaft didn't help inspire the character of John Rebus? No. Except that I did get his first name "John" from John Shaft. A "Rebus" is a kind of picture puzzle. I understand that you now wish you'd given Rebus an entirely different name. I came up with it when I was a smart-arse Ph.D. student who was doing lots of semiotics and deconstruction, and I thought that since the crime novel was playing a game with the reader, I'd do more of the same -- give him the name of a puzzle. Now I just think it's a stupid name. That was the thing, though: I was coming from left field to crime fiction.

Another way I got into it was by reading a lot of criticism, like Umberto Eco's books on literary theory, in which he was fascinated by James Bond and by Sherlock Holmes and stuff like that. And I thought, Oh, this is something worth looking at. But then, when the first Rebus novel, Knots & Crosses, was published [in 1987] and it went onto the Mystery shelves in bookstores, I was appalled! I thought, here I am doing a Ph.D., and I'm going to be a professor of English... and I've written a whodunit. And you didn't realize that from the outset? No. I was the accidental crime writer. I used to go into bookstores and I'd take [copies of] my book off the Crime Fiction shelves and put them in with Scottish Fiction. But then, in the last year of my Ph.D. work, when I should've been studying Muriel Spark, I started reading crime fiction to make sure it was OK. So your doctoral degree was in Scottish Literature? Yeah, but I didn't finish it. I wrote three novels, instead.

The first one was never published -- it was a black comedy, set in a Highlands hotel, and it was called Summer Rites. Never published, though my wife says it's my best book. Then the second one was The Flood [1986], which was a Bildungsroman about a young man growing up in Fife and dreaming about moving to Edinburgh. And the third one was Knots & Crosses. Part of my impetus for writing that book was that, in The Flood I'd written about a guy in a town that was too much like Cardenden -- so everybody I knew thought they were somewhere in that story. It didn't help, either, that the name of my heroine turned out to be the name of one of our neighbors, only I didn't know it. So I thought that I'd write a book that was very, very different. And in Knots & Crosses I made Rebus a lot older than me, and although we had similar backgrounds, he'd gone a different way from the way I'd gone. In fact, he went the way a lot of my friends have gone.

In that part of Fife, where the mines had all closed down and unemployment was bad, if you weren't "clever" enough to go to university, your job options were pretty limited. A lot of my friends went into the army or went into the police. And Rebus did both: he originally joined the army, then he moved sideways into the police. Maybe if I hadn't decided to go to university, I would've been more like him. Then, once Knots & Crosses was received well, you realized police procedural writing was your calling? Actually, that first Rebus book was received with complete silence. It hardly made a ding. So I went off and did other stuff. I figured that was my one detective novel, and the next time I did a LeCarré-ish spy novel, The Watchman [1990], set in London. Which you apparently liked a lot, although I confess I've never read The Watchman. I did like it. I still like it. I think the writing is some of my best, though the book is almost impossible to get now; it hasn't been in print for over a decade.

But even recently re-reading The Watchman, I thought the writing had a lot of maturity to it, which is amazing, since I wrote it when I was just 26. After that, I wrote a sort of big, pulpy book called Westwind [1990], which was set in the States, although I'd never been to the States: I used the Rand-McNally Road Atlas and a couple of videos for my research. It started off as a kind of comedy-thriller and then my editor, who was a real plot doctor, got hold of it and made me change it all around. He wanted the story tougher, but it just ended up being a mess. It had spy satellites, space shuttles, all kinds of shit in it. How did you get back from there to Rebus? I think somebody said to me one day, "Whatever happened to that guy Rebus?" I liked him. And I said, "Well, I've got another idea for a novel." Were you still laboring over your Ph.D. at this point? Let's think. The Flood was published in February of 86.

I got married [to Miranda Harvey, who'd been a year above him at the university] in July 86 and moved to London. So by the time Knots & Crosses came out, I was living in London, working as a secretary at a college down there. I also worked in London as the editor of a hi-fi magazine. Meanwhile, my wife was working full-time as a civil servant in Whitehall, pretty much supporting me, so I had some time for writing. But eventually she persuaded me, after four years in London, that if I was going to be a full-time writer, we had to move to France. How she got that past me, I don't know: I must've been really drunk or something. Anyway, she reasoned that if we moved to France, where land was cheaper in the countryside, we could buy a farm and become self-sufficient and I could sit and write all day. So that's what we did. Eventually, though, we ended up with a fridge full of lettuce and cabbage that we didn't really want to eat. And you now live in Edinburgh again?

We returned about three years ago, though we've still got the house in France; both our kids [sons Jack and Kit] were born there. We lived there for six years and I used to travel to Edinburgh six times a year to do research. But we finally moved back [to Scotland], partly because the kids were getting to be school age, and partly because my British publishers were going crazy -- they said they couldn't promote me properly, because I wasn't available in the UK to do interviews and such. So has your being settled back in Scotland made a difference in your stories? I don't think so. The Hanging Garden was half written in France and half in Edinburgh. Dead Souls was completely written in Edinburgh, and that's the first book since Knots & Crosses that's been like that. And I've got another coming out, which was going to be the first book of a trilogy, but is now going to be a one-book trilogy. This is Set In Darkness? It is. And I'd originally thought that within the series I'd create an interlinked trilogy about the new Scottish Parliament. But two things happened. First, I decided that the Scots Parliament only deserved a one-book trilogy -- that's plenty for these idiots.

And second, there was one character who was going to be in all three books, a member of the Parliament -- in Book One he's running for Parliament, in Book Two he's elected and in Book Three the Parliament's up and running. But 40 or 50 pages into Book One, the book whispers to me, Kill him. I thought: No way, I've got three mysteries I'm working on, I don't need this hassle. No, said the book, you've got to kill him. He's got to go. Well, books have got an internal logic and there's fuck-all you can do about it. So I killed the guy. And once he got bumped off, sure enough, I felt a lot more comfortable with the book. Of course, I didn't know who killed him, I didn't know why he died -- I just had an extra corpse on my hands. The book told me what to do and I went along with it. It was the right decision, even if it did mean an end to my plans for a trilogy. Where does the title Set In Darkness come from?

It comes partly from the setting: it's winter in Edinburgh, where it's dark when you go to work and it's dark when you head home. It's also part of a line from an obscure American poem: "Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light." I thought the title worked well, because the new Parliament could be leading Scotland into the light after 300 years of being linked to England. And Rebus, you know, has his moments of darkness, but always he seems to finally reach a point of light. Despite the fact that I expect him -- especially after Black and Blue -- to descend into debilitating cynicism at any moment. [Laughs] Well, Black and Blue was about as bad as it gets. That was the series' darkest moment. But since then, I think Rebus has brightened a bit. And in Set In Darkness, he's actually quite a bit looser in life. He's kind of decided that he's just going to ignore procedures altogether, get his own little group of people together to run investigations with. Can he do that? I know that as your series has gone along, realism has become less important, but still... No police procedural is ever realistic.

A realistic police procedural would be the most boring book in the world, because police investigation is tedious and police officers are all tiny cogs in the machine; they never even get to see the whole investigation through from start to finish. But yes, he could go off on his own, without looking like Superman. His bosses know that Rebus will get results; he just might not go about getting them the way the police would prefer. You've admitted before that when you started writing the Rebus books, you really knew nothing about police procedures. How did you learn? Slowly, though I've never made it all up. When I was working on Knots & Crosses, for instance, I went to a great deal of effort to get things right. I wrote a letter to the Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders -- the head guy -- and said, "Dear Sir: I am writing a novel that will lift the lid off the true nature of the police in Edinburgh. Will you help me?" Well, he told me to go to this certain police station in Leith. Which I did.

I shambled along there looking like the student I was, unshaven, with long greasy hair, bloodshot eyes -- I'd been on the booze the night before and I don't think I'd been to bed for 24 hours. Anyway, I appeared to be a tramp with a notebook and pen. And these two detectives kind of looked at me skeptically, and they said, "What's your book about?" And I said, "Well, these kids have been abducted and this detective has got to work out whodunit and why." What I didn't know at the time was that this police station was investigating a child abduction, which was very similar to what I was describing; eventually, seven kids were taken and killed. These cops see a lunatic come into the station with this spurious story about writing a novel and they immediately cast me as a suspect. But they're very clever. They said to me, "Well, you want to see how an investigation works?" And I said, "Yeah, I'd love that." So they start asking me all these questions, and typing in my answers, and I think I'm getting a great story, lots of local color.

Then, eventually, they get to the question, "What were you doing on the night of the 11th of November?" I'm playing along with them, and I say, "I don't know, I think I was drunk that night." And that gets typed in, too. Well, it wasn't till I went home that weekend and told my dad the story, that he said, "You silly bugger, they think you've done it." And I went back and asked the police, and sure enough, I was a suspect -- they were looking at me as a kidnapper. Did they finally catch the real culprit? Eventually, down in England. And this is one of those coincidences that you couldn't put into a novel, because nobody would believe you. It seems some guy was cutting his grass with an old lawnmower and a stone caught in the blade, so he bent down to fix it. As he bent down, he happened to look to the edge of the lawn, where he had a hedge. And beneath the hedge he saw a child's feet and a man's feet, and he saw the child's feet suddenly lift up -- and heard a little squeal.

Later, the man went inside, and he saw this van driving away. So he took down the number and phoned the police. The police found the van, pulled it over, and in the back of the van, there was a rolled-up carpet -- and the carpet was moving. That was victim number eight, right there. Speaking of coincidences, I understand that you've encountered some other doozies during the writing of your books. That was certainly the case with Black and Blue, which was about the real-life case of Bible John, a serial killer in Glasgow who was never caught. The case had been dead for 30 years. Then, two weeks after I handed in my manuscript to the publisher, the headline in the paper was "Police Dig Up Bible John." They'd gotten new DNA, a genetic fingerprint from the clothing of John's third victim. And they went back to the original suspects, trying to get a match. One suspect had committed suicide in 1981, so they went to one of his cousins, and the DNA fingerprint was pretty close to Bible John's. So the police got permission to dig this guy's body up, and they did a DNA analysis.

Eventually, after a few months, they found that the killer wasn't him, after all. Which was lucky for me, because in Black and Blue, Bible John is alive and well and living in contemporary Scotland. The same sort of thing happened with The Hanging Garden. We were living in France, near the site of a real-life atrocity that happened during the Second World War. It had a powerful effect on me, that place. I wanted to write about it, but couldn't figure out how. Finally I thought, I'll write about a suspected war criminal living in Edinburgh, quietly, and Rebus has to work out whether it's worth prosecuting him after 50 years. So I went back to Edinburgh, having written half the story, only to find that there was a suspected Nazi war criminal living quietly in Edinburgh. And a TV documentary crew had made a film about him and he'd sued them and taken them to court. And this was all going on while I'm sitting on this book I thought was a novel. But, of course, the most serendipitous thing of all was that I came across somebody named Rebus. Really? Was he a cop? No, a central heating engineer.

But he's the only person named Rebus I've ever met. And he drinks in the same pub I do in Edinburgh. When I moved back to Edinburgh, I was in a different part of town, a part I didn't know particularly well. And I walked into a bar one night and the first people I met were Mr. and Mrs. Joe Rebus. They're the only Rebuses in Scotland. And they live on Rankin Drive. Spooky, eh? When you were starting out with the Rebus series, you also penned a trio of novels under the pseudonym "Jack Harvey." Why? It was taking only three months to write a book back then and I just needed something else to fill in the days. So I would write one Rebus and then one Jack Harvey. The Harveys were big, fat airport-type thrillers: you'd buy one for a flight and you'd chuck it away at the other end. But they kind of let me go off the leash a little bit and let me do things that I couldn't do in the Rebus books. Witch Hunt [1993] was about a female assassin who goes after a Member of Parliament in the UK.

Bleeding Hearts [1994] was about a male assassin, who's being tracked by a really dodgy private eye. And the last one was called Blood Hunt [1995]. What was that one about? I think it was about the beef scare in Britain and a government cover-up, with people dying under mysterious circumstances. And that was all I wrote of those. Thrillers take a lot of time and research, because thriller readers demand lots of detail. More than regular crime fiction readers do, you think? Oh, absolutely. In thrillers, the forensic details are important and people don't just pick up a gun, they pick up a certain kind of gun and you have to tell the kind of ammo you're using. Whereas in the Rebus books, because I know Edinburgh so well, I can just skate through a lot of the details. It's easier. Do you see yourself continuing to write the Rebus novels, or are there other books you'd like to compose, as well? Oh, I've got loads of ideas for books that aren't about Rebus. I've got a contract for two more Rebuses.

But he lives in real time; he was 38 in Knots & Crosses and he's 52 now. He'll have to retire at 55. So I reckon I've got another five or six Rebus books, max. Then... well, I did a couple of radio plays for the BBC, black comedies set in 18th-century Edinburgh. They featured a guy called Cullender; the name is a Scots word for a colander -- apt, because I visualized him as a "moral sieve" (i.e., his morals aren't watertight). I would love to write a book about him. Edinburgh in the late 18th century was a real hotbed, because all of the Parisian aristocracy were moving to Edinburgh to get away from the guillotines. And you had these people called "caddies" -- the term "golf caddy" comes originally from this. A caddie was like a servant you would rent for a day or so. Say you were visiting town; well, you'd pick up a caddie as soon as you arrived and he would show you the best place to stay, where to eat, where to drink.

He'd run errands for you and he would see you home safely at night, so you didn't get hit over the head and robbed. Cullender was a caddie and I thought it was a great character -- like a modern-day private eye, because he's got access to the high people, and he's got access to the dens of iniquity. Which other crime or mystery novelists do you read? I like a lot of American writers. I like Michael Connelly. I like Larry Block. I like most of the Jameses: James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, James W. Hall. I also like Andrew Vachss, although I actually like the reason why he writes -- to sponsor his law practice -- more than I like some of his books. In the UK, I like Val McDermid. Also Ruth Rendell; I think there's nothing she can't do. Tell me how you look at Edinburgh. The reader gets a certain idea of what the city is like from reading your novels. But do you really see it as so dark and gloomy a place? I'm a pretty pessimistic sort of guy. I'm attracted to the dark side.

It doesn't matter which city in the world you set me down in, after five minutes of aimless wandering, I'll be in the sleaze section of town -- I'm a magnet for that kind of stuff. And I think that by dealing with this darkness in fiction, in real life I can be a happy, well-adjusted guy. I think a lot of crime writers would be very seriously unstable people if they weren't able to deal with their fantasies, fears, whatever on paper. But about Edinburgh: it's got a very dark history. It's a very repressed city, a very Calvinist, Presbyterian place. As opposed to Glasgow, which seems to be very Celtic and open and brash and loud. Even the crime in Edinburgh is different from what you see in Glasgow. Glasgow crime tends to be easily identified and solved. Maybe you're wearing the wrong football colors and you get stabbed to death -- that's a typical Glasgow crime. But in Edinburgh, the typical crime is grave robbing. Things happen under cloak of darkness. It's a place of conspiracies, a city with a village mentality, where everybody knows everybody else. How do Edinburgh residents feel about the way you portray their city in these books?

For some reason, the Edinburgh people love them, though I think the Tourist Board is unlikely to recommend them. Even the cops like my books, although I make the occasional mistake. Some of the villains I've met like them. It's no accident that last year, I had eight out of the top-10 Scottish bestsellers. Somebody recently called Rebus "the Harry Potter of Noir." You know, don't you, that the Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, also lives in Edinburgh? This place that was totally fuckin' barren of writers back in the 80s when I was starting now has Rowling; Irvine Welsh, who wrote Trainspotting; Ian Banks, who writes science fiction and literary novels; Dorothy Dunnett, who writes historical fiction; and me. You want any sort of literature, Edinburgh's got it. By comparison, Glasgow just seems to be starting out as a home to authors. Well, there's Denise Mina, who wrote last year's wonderful novel Garnethill. And then there was William McIlvanney, who wrote Laidlaw (1977) and a couple of sequels. Yeah, but McIlvanney has stopped writing crime fiction.

He says he wrote those books for the money, and then didn't want to write anymore. McIlvanney was important to me in the early days, because he was a proper, grown-up "literary" writer who wrote crime fiction. And I thought: If it's OK for him, then it's OK for me. What about Quintin Jardine? He also writes books set in Edinburgh: Skinner's Ghosts, Skinner's Ordeal, etc. On the record? On the record, they're dreadful. [Laughs] So what do you think of them off the record? No, I can't go on with that. His are just a different kind of book. They're well written and he's got a good audience. They're just not the kind of crime novel I go for, let's put it that way. I mean, [Deputy Chief Constable Bob] Skinner, his character, gets almost nothing wrong. By comparison, Rebus gets almost nothing right and if he gets it right, it's for all the wrong reasons and he feels guilty about it. Yet Rebus wouldn't be the character that he is without those traits. He's a rich, wonderfully drawn, but very flawed figure.

And I think it's the flaws that people like about him. You know, every time I do a gig in Scotland, someone stands up -- usually a woman of a certain age -- and says, "Can't Rebus settle down, stop smoking, stop drinking and get some decent grub inside him?" And for every person who does that, 10 others stand up and say, "No, no, he's the only character in modern fiction who makes me feel healthy and wise." | January 2000 J. KINGSTON PIERCE is the crime fiction editor of January Magazine. To learn more about Ian Rankin and his novels, check out the author's Web sites in the United States and the United Kingdom . Ian Rankin : NPR Ian Rankin Email April 22, 20078:00 AM ET For twenty years Scottish Detective Inspector John Rebus has been tracking down criminals in the novels of Ian Rankin.

In the new book, The Naming of the Dead, (Little, Brown and Company ISBN-10: 0316057576) Rebus's new case is set during the real life backdrop of the G8 Summit which was held in Scotland in 2005. But after two decades Detective Rebus pursuit of crime maybe coming to a close, as Rankin reveals in his next novel that the aged Inspector retires. (10:13) =20 LIANE HANSEN, host: A rebus is a puzzle in which symbols or pictures represent words or syllables. Rebus is also the last name of Ian Rankin's hero in Rankin's mystery novels. Detective Inspector John Rebus solves crimes in Scotland, and Rankin's new book, "The Naming of the Dead," marks the 20th anniversary of the Rebus character. Author Ian Rankin joins us now from the studios of member station KUHF in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the program. Mr. IAN RANKIN (Author, Detective Inspector Rebus Mystery Series): Thanks very much. HANSEN: For those who have yet to read a Rebus mystery, describe him. Mr.

RANKIN: Describe him - that's kind of why I'm doing the books. I mean, the reason I keep writing about him is because I keep finding out new stuff about him. When we first met him in book one, he was 40 years old. He's now nearly 60, so he does actually age in real time. He is a cop working in a police department in Edinburgh as a detective, but really, he operates almost as a private eye. He has a thing about authority. He doesn't get on well with his superiors, and he would much rather be left alone to get his teeth into a case but do it his own way. He's a solitary sort of character. He likes to drink. He smokes. He likes '60s and '70s rock music. He's got a busted marriage behind him. He's very close to his colleague, Siobhan Clarke, but she's learned a lot of bad things from him and she's desperately trying to go it her own way and shrug him off. HANSEN: Yeah. Why did you call him Rebus? Mr. RANKIN: As you pointed out, a rebus is a picture puzzle.

And when I was a little kid, there was a Sunday newspaper we used to get in Scotland, and it had a page every Sunday of kids' puzzles including a rebus. And I wrote the first Rebus novel when I was in my early 20s and I was a postgraduate student of literature at the University of Edinburgh. And I thought, oh, what a clever thing to call him, you know? Because in the first book, he is actually being sent picture puzzles. HANSEN: Do you still like the name? Mr. RANKIN: You know, I spent years explaining to people, and then not that long ago - just a few years ago - I actually met a guy called Joel Rebus who lives in Edinburgh, and he said, I thought you got the name out of the phone book. And I said, well, I never looked in the phone book. I met him in a bar, we just bumped into each other, we got talking. So he got the phone book, the phone directory from behind the bar and looked down, and sure enough - a Rebus, J., and his address is Rankin Drive.

So it was like, I'd meant to happen, it was like, it was meant to be. HANSEN: How did he first enter your mind as a character? Mr. RANKIN: I'd gone along to sign a contract on my very first book, which was not a crime novel. It was called "The Flood." That was in the afternoon. In the evening, sitting back in my apartment, staring at the fire, I got the idea for this story, this - messages, secret messages being sent to this character. And I remember writing some notes to myself on that first night, and it said the hero may be a cop. But I - no, I didn't grow up with detective fiction. I mean, I watched a lot of crime movies and crime shows on TV. And, sort of, crime fiction had passed me by, so I wrote the first Rebus novel without really thinking that I was writing inside the genre. HANSEN: You knew nothing about crime novels. How did you get the police stuff right, the procedural stuff right? Mr. RANKIN: Well, I did what any good research student would have done.

I wrote to the chief of police in Edinburgh and said, you don't know me, but I'm writing a novel about the police, and I'm going to lift the lid off the true nature of the police in Edinburgh and show them to be complex and corrupt, and will you help me? And I got a very nice letter back saying, go to this police station at this, you know, this certain time and talk to these two detectives. So I duly turned up with my notebook and pen, and these two detectives stared at me disbelievingly and said, you're writing a book? And they said to me, what's the, you know, what's the plot? And so I laid out for them in broad brushstrokes the plot of the first Rebus novel, "Knots and Crosses," not realizing that these very police men at this very police station were investigating a crime in the real world that was very close to what I was writing about. So basically, I became a suspect. They thought I'd done it, and I was coming in to play games with them. So I became a suspect in a missing person's case, which became a murder inquiry. So that was my first attempt at research into the police.

And after that, I stayed away from them for quite some time. (Soundbite of laughter) HANSEN: I can imagine why. The new mystery, "The Naming of the Dead," is set against the 2005 G8 Summit at Gleneagles in Scotland. Why did this event make such fertile ground for a Rebus mystery? Mr. RANKIN: Oh, it's just a gift. It's a gift to the writer, especially if you're writing crime fiction. I mean, from a - from, sort of, January or February of that year, I was reading in the newspapers there were going to be hundreds of thousands of demonstrators and rioters coming to Edinburgh. The city would be under siege, there would be roadblocks, there would be tens of thousands of cops drafted in from all over the U.K. And I had a little smile to myself for two reasons: one, I thought, this curmudgeonly cop I've created, Rebus, would hate all of that, but most of all, he would hate other cops from outside Edinburgh trespassing on his patch. And I thought, what an interesting backdrop.

You know, if Rebus is actually trying to solve a crime but all this other stuff is happening in the background, that would make it interesting because the story really is, at its heart, about personal responsibility. It's about the difference that we think we make to the world. Do rock stars who stand up on a stage and hold concerts for world peace or for, you know, to end war or whatever, or end poverty - do they make a difference? Hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets - do they make a difference? Do the politicians themselves make a difference? And, I mean, the irony there was that on the fourth day of that week, we had the bombings in London, the 777 bombings. And what we discovered was that a couple of zealots with a knapsack filled with explosives can make a much bigger difference in the short term than any of us. HANSEN: Did that affect your writing of the book? I mean, the timeline of the book… Mr. RANKIN: Yeah. HANSEN: …it takes place within a few days but before the bombings. Mr.

RANKIN: I just wasn't - you know, when I started thinking about writing the book, I had nothing in mind like that. But because it actually happened in the real world, it had to become part of the storyline. And I didn't want it to vicariously become part of the storyline, so I had to find a way of actually making sure that it was intrinsic to everything that I was going to say. HANSEN: Well, there were two mysteries actually going on. One is when someone who was attending the G8, a member of Parliament - he falls, is pushed, he jumps off one of the bulwarks during the big, fancy dinner. But Rebus is also called on to solve a crime of what looks to be serial killing, kind of, vigilante killing of people who have been in prison for rape or sexual assault, and they've come out of prison, and then they're murdered in a pretty gruesome way. And one of the places that Rebus ends up is a place that you call Clootie Well, and it's a place - I mean, this is so strange - it's a place where there are bits of clothing hung on trees, and they find some evidence of three murders.

But Clootie Well - what is that? Mr. RANKIN: Well, it's yet another example that anything you make up is less strange than the real world. Having spent G8 week in Edinburgh, my family and I then went on vacation, and we went just north of Inverness in the highlands of Scotland, and there was - there were tourist signposts to this thing called the Clootie Well, and I knew, from the mists of time, that "clootie" was a Scots word meaning cloth or clothing. And so we thought, well, let's take a look. And when we appeared in this clearing, sure enough, all the branches of the trees were draped with pieces of cloth and items of clothing in various states of decay. And we learned that local people had been leaving items of clothing here for centuries to appease the wood sprites. It's a kind of good luck charm. Now, as the pieces of clothing deteriorated, they fell to the ground and created a kind of mulch upon which you walked, and this kind of smell of rotten was overpowering.

And there was a little spring that bubbled out of the ground, and people had left candles and toys and little dolls and candy bars and things. It was the creepiest tourist attraction I think I'd ever been to. And as soon as - being - having the mind that I've got, maybe, as soon as I walked into it, I thought: crime scene. It was obvious to me, here I was in the middle of the vacation, thinking of things for my next book; and all I did was physically move a hundred miles south to the outskirts of Gleneagles, which is where the G8 leaders were actually meeting, and that gave me a reason to get Rebus within striking distance of the G8. HANSEN: You are writing a new book about him, because I wondered - the way that "The Naming of the Dead" ends, it appears that there would be more work for Detective Inspector Rebus. Mr. RANKIN: Yeah, but the new book, the one I'm writing just now, is his retirement book. At the end of it - I mean, I've got it in mind - at the end, he will retire. And what happens next, I'm not exactly sure.

I'll think about it in the fullness of time. I mean, there are various things I can do. Siobhan, his colleague, can become the main police character and he, retired, a civilian, can help her out or he can do the dirty work for her. Or, we can change the law. There is a fan of the books who is a member of the Scottish Parliament, and she is debating this with the justice minister. She wants the justice minister to change the retirement age in the real world for cops so that Rebus can continue to work until he's 65. I can't tell you how much hate mail I am getting from real-life cops who are looking forward to their retirement at 60, thank you very much, and don't want to work until they're 65 just so a fictional character continue to tread the mean streets of Edinburgh. HANSEN: Do you think if you met him, you'd like him, and would he like you? Mr. RANKIN: He certainly wouldn't like me. He would - I mean, he's an Old Testament sort of guy. He very much sees the world in black and white and good and bad.

He would see me as a lily-livered liberal who has never had to do a hard day's work in his life. The things we would share in common, we could stand at a bar and we could drink a pint of beer, and we could talk music. And once we'd exhausted that, that would be about it. HANSEN: You want to write American comic books. You're going to write a graphic novel, right? Mr. RANKIN: Apparently I am. I was in New York recently. I went to see DC Comics and Vertigo Comics, and I am doing a "Hellblazer" - "John Constantine: Hellblazer." It's a standalone graphic novel, I think, of 64 pages. It's what I wanted to do when I was 10 years old, so you can say that I've - you know, my life has taken a sudden switch, and from writing crime novels I am going to do at least one major comic book in my life, and that'll be such a thrill. I'm looking forward to that challenge.

HANSEN: Ian Rankin is the author of "The Naming of the Dead." The book, published by LittleBrown, marks the 20th anniversary of Rankin's character, Detective Inspector John Rebus. Ian Rankin joined us from the studios of member station KUHF in Houston, Texas. Thanks a lot. Good luck. Mr. RANKIN: Liane, a real pleasure. Thank you. (Soundbite of music) HANSEN: To get hooked on the latest Inspector Rebus mystery, go to npr.org where you can read the first chapter of "The Naming of the Dead." This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen. Copyright © 2007 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc. , an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Ian Rankin | Ian Rankin | ZoomInfo.com Ian Rankin + Get 10 Free Contacts a Month Please agree to the terms and conditions I agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . I understand that I will receive a subscription to ZoomInfo Grow at no charge in exchange for downloading and installing the ZoomInfo Contact Contributor utility which, among other features, involves sharing my business contacts as well as headers and signature blocks from emails that I receive. Fort Kinnaird Retail Park, Edinburgh EH15 3RD United Kingdom Company Description Welcome to Ian Rankinâ€™s official website. The site contains loads of information on Ian Rankin and his most famous character, Rebus. ... more Find other employees at this company (1) Background Information The Royal Society of Edinburgh Board Member Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust President Royal School for the Blind St Hilda's College Universities of Abertay Dundee , St Andrews , Edinburgh , Hull honorary doctorates Web References (200 Total References) Ian Rankin Mystery Novels Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus ... Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus ... by Ian Rankin, Ross Gillespie and Tricia Malley (Photographers) ...

johnconnollybooks.com [cached] Alternatively, turn right toward Earl Grey Street and Tollcross Fire Station comes into view, in which an unfortunate female in Ian Rankin's Mortal Causes has acid poured down her throat. ... Given that Johnston and Rankin have written about 20 crime novels between them, the life expectancy of modern literary characters in Edinburgh is, it would appear, pretty short. ... Yet Edinburgh's literary links to crime, adventure and intrigue go back further than the city's modern chroniclers such as Rankin, Johnston, Banks, the satirical crime novelist Christopher Brookmyre and Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting. ... Ian Rankin, writing in the Scotsman in 1997, suggested that "the very nature of Scotland's capital - cool, detached, furtive, clandestine - lends itself to novels of intrigue. . . [it is] a secret city. ... Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin ... Milne's, at 35 Hanover Street, is a long-established haunt for Edinburgh's literati, while those with a taste for crime can pop in for a pint at the Oxford Bar, the watering hole of Ian Rankin's detective, Rebus.

Just don't mention Rankin or Rebus. The Complaints - Ian Rankin With our interactive map you can explore Ian Rankin's Edinburgh from anywhere in the world. ... You can explore each location on Street View as well as discovering in which of Ian's books the location appears ... The Falls by Ian Rankin ... Dead Souls by Ian Rankin ... Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin ... The Black Book by Ian Rankin ... The Falls by Ian Rankin ... Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin ... Strip Jack by Ian Rankin ... Dead Souls by Ian Rankin ... The Black Book by Ian Rankin ... Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin ... The Falls by Ian Rankin ... Black and Blue by Ian Rankin ... Dead Souls by Ian Rankin Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin ... Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin ... Rebus Scotland by Ian Rankin ... The Falls by Ian Rankin ... The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin ... A Good Hanging by Ian Rankin ... Black and Blue by Ian Rankin ... Dead Souls by Ian Rankin ... Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin ... Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin ... Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin ... Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin ...

Rebus Scotland by Ian Rankin ... Strip Jack by Ian Rankin ... The Black Book by Ian Rankin ... The Falls by Ian Rankin ... The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin ... Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin ... Keep up to date with Ian by signing up to receive his Rebus - Show News, Reviews, Recaps and Photos - TV.com EDIT Welcome to the Rebus guide at TV.com. Rebus is a series based on the novels of Ian Rankin, one of Scotland's well known contemporary writers of mysteries. Detective Inspector John Rebus of Edinburgh CID takes to the streets in search of the criminals committing the murders, drug dealing, money laundering and other crimes in the city. The first season of Rebus featured John Hannah as the eponymous detective and was jointly produced by Scottish Television and Hannah's own production company, Clerkenwell Films. Rankin was said to feel that Hannah was miscast in the role. The fourth episode was postponed in light of the subject matter and the events of 11 September 2001, and finally surfaced for the launch of the ITV3 channel some three years later.

By this time, Hannah had decided to move on and the show was put on hold pending a search for a new star. New feature-length episodes, now featuring an all-new cast and with Ken Stott in the lead role, were filmed in 2005. The show was cancelled in Feruary 2008, following an announcement by Stott that he would not make any further episodes. Rebus was an SMG production.moreless Rankin to rehabilitate Malcolm Fox Rebus character - The Scotsman Heroes Rankin to rehabilitate Malcolm Fox Rebus character Sorry, we're having problems with our video player at the moment, but are working to fix it as soon as we can Waiting for Video... 14:21 Tuesday 01 October 2013 02:14 Wednesday 02 October 2013 Have your say IAN Rankin’s two detective characters, John Rebus and the newer Malcolm Fox, will team up in the crime writer’s latest book. The two cops clashed in Rankin’s last novel as grizzled Rebus was investigated by Fox as he tried to re-join the force. Ian Rankin.

Picture: Ian Rutherford Rankin, whose Edinburgh-set novels have sold millions around the world, said he wanted to “rehabilitate” Fox after the Complaints department officer squared off again Rebus in Standing in Another Man’s Grave, which came out last year. In Saints of the Shadow Bible, which is released in November this year, the two crimefighters will work together on a 30-year-old case which Rebus’ team worked on at the time and has been reopened. Rankin said in a YouTube video that fans had seen Fox, who first appeared in 2009, as the “baddie,” as he did not see Rebus as a fit policeman for the 21st century and tried to prevent him re-entering the force. Rankin said: “I knew that a rehabilitation project had to be undertaken and in this new book hopefully, hopefully I rehabilitate Malcolm somewhat. “From investigating Rebus he actually goes to working with Rebus and as the pair of them get to know each other they come to an understanding of what makes each man tick. “And maybe through that not sympathy but empathy.

Hopefully that rehabilitation has been undertaken to a satisfactory degree.” Rankin also says Rebus will now be answering to his former protege, Siobhan Clarke. The author also said: “Rebus is back on the force but demoted and reporting to Siobhan. “He’s still a rogue cop with a major chip on his shoulder but this time round it’s his past that Fox is investigating.” Old-fashioned cop Rebus first appeared in Knots and Crosses, which was released in 1987, and after retiring in Exit Music he reappears as a civilian working in a cold case unit in Standing in Another man’s Grave. Detective Inspector Malcolm Fox works for the police’s Complaints and Conduct department, which investigates other officers and is viewed with hostility by others in the force. Rankin said earlier this year: “They’re both in the book, but whether they’re teaming up or adversaries is something I’ll leave for people to find out.”

Question: What is the first name of Detective Inspector Rebus, the character created by author Ian Rankin?
Answer: John