Inspector Rebus

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

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.

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. [ [http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1874432,00.html Rankin goes home to plot Rebus's end | News | Guardian Unlimited Books ] ] The 17th book, "Exit Music" was released on the 6 September 2007.

Novels

#"Knots and Crosses" (1987)
#"Hide and Seek" (1991)
#"Tooth and Nail" (original title "Wolfman") (1992)
#"Strip Jack" (1992)
#"The Black Book" (1993)
#"Mortal Causes" (1994)
#"Let it Bleed" (1996)
#"Black and Blue" (1997)
#"The Hanging Garden" (1998)
#"Dead Souls" (1999)
#"Set in Darkness" (2000)
#"The Falls" (2001)
#"Resurrection Men" (2002)
#"A Question of Blood" (2003)
#"Fleshmarket Close" (published in the USA as "Fleshmarket Alley") (2004)
#"The Naming of the Dead" (2006)
#"Exit Music" (2007)

hort Stories

*"'A Good Hanging' and Other Stories" (1992) - short stories
**"Playback" (1990) - first published in "Winter's Crimes 22"
**"The Dean Curse"
**"Being Frank"
**"Concrete Evidence"
**"Seeing Things"
**"A Good Hanging"
**"Tit for Tat"
**"Not Provan"
**"Sunday"
**"Auld Lang Syne"
**"The Gentleman's Club"
**"Monstrous Trumpet"
*"Death Is Not the End" (1998) - novella
*"Beggars Banquet" (2002) - short stories (includes seven Rebus stories and "Death Is Not the End")
**"Trip Trap" (1992) - first published in "1st Culprit"
**"Facing the Music" (1994) - first published in "Midwinter Mysteries 4"
**"Talk Show" (1991) - first published in "Winter's Crimes 23"
**"Castle Dangerous" (1993) - first published in "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine", Oct. 1993
**"In the Frame" (1992) - first published in "Winter's Crimes 24"
**"Window of Opportunity" (1995) - first published in "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine", Dec. 1995
**"No Sanity Clause" (2000) - first published in the "Daily Telegraph", Dec. 2000
*"Tell Me Who To Kill" (2003) - short story, first published in "Mysterious Pleasures", a collection celebrating fifty years of the Crime Writers' Association
*"Saint Nicked" (2004) Published In The Best British Mysteries Volume 1
*"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"]
*Rebus - Three Great Novels ["Resurrection Men", "A Question of Blood", "Fleshmarket Close"] (June 2008)
*The Complete Short Stories ["'A Good Hanging' and Other Stories", "Beggars Banquet", "Atonement"]

Also

*Rebus's Scotland - A Personal Journey.
* [http://www.agulin.aoyama.ac.jp/cgi-bin/exec_cgi/ibibdet.cgi?CGILANG=japanese&U_CHARSET=euc-jp&ID=BB25233639 New Edinburgh Crimes by Ian Rankin] - containing the short stories "Playback" and "Talk Show", published in Japan (1996)

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 (and also because most of the books have been recorded separately in both abridged and unabridged versions).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))
*Ewan Stewart (Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, unabridged versions)

Three of the novels have won [http://www.theapa.net/awards.php 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 were dramatised for television between 2000 and 2007 in four series of Rebus. John Hannah played Inspector Rebus in the first series, before being replaced by Ken Stott.

Recurring Characters

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

ee also

*Lothian and Borders Police
*Areas of Edinburgh

References

External links

* [http://www.ianrankin.net/books.asp Ian Rankin]
* [http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=810 Rebus and Rankin at Scotsman.com]
* [http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/edinburgh/rebus/index.html Undiscovered Scotland Entry]
* [http://www.rampantscotland.com/features/bldev_rebus.htm Rampant Scotland Article]
* [http://www.oxfordbar.com/ The Oxford bar]
* [http://theoxfordbar.14.forumer.com Unofficial Oxford Bar Forum]