Inspector Rebus Mysteries

7 primary works • 18 total works

Black and Blue

by Ian Rankin

Published 13 January 1997

The local constabulary is stretched to the limit by tragedies on and offshore and Rebus cannot afford to make one single mistake if he's to stay alive, nevermind solve any one of the several murder cases now consuming his every waking thought.

The Hanging Garden

by Ian Rankin

Published 19 January 1998

Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh police hunts for a World War II criminal, a Nazi officer who massacred an entire village in France. At the same time he has to bust a ring which is importing East European prostitutes.

Dead Souls

by Ian Rankin

Published 4 February 1999

The tenth Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES.

'Britain's best crime novelist' DAILY EXPRESS

'No one in Britain writes better crime novels today Evening Standard

Stalking a poisoner at the local zoo, Inspector John Rebus comes across a paedophile taking pictures of children. When the social workers claim he is there for legitimate educational reasons, Rebus is faced with a dilemma - should he be outed to protect local kids or given a chance to start anew?

As the locals begin a hate campaign Rebus gets a call from the past: the son of a friend has gone missing and no one else will make time to ask the right questions. And then a fragment of Scotland's criminal history is repatriated at the end of a life sentence for murder. Once more Rebus's cup of trouble runneth over and the ghosts of past misdeeds return to haunt Edinburgh's streets.

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Ian Rankin's A HEART FULL OF HEADSTONES was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 10th October 2022 and w/c 1st May 2023

Set in Darkness

by Ian Rankin

Published 17 February 2000

Edinburgh is about to become the home of the first Scottish parliament in nigh on 300 years. As political passions run high, DI John Rebus is charged with liaison, thanks to the new parliament being resident in Queensbury House, bang in the middle of his patch. But Queensbury House has its own, dark past. Legend has it that a young man was roasted there on a spit by a madman. When the fireplace where the youth died is uncovered another more recent murder victim is found. Days later, in the gardens outside, there is a third body. This victim is Roddy Grieve, a prospective MSP, and Rebus is under pressure to find instant answers. As the case proceeds, the Inspector finds himself face to face with one of Edinburgh's most notorious criminals...

The Falls

by Ian Rankin

Published 23 March 2001

A student has gone missing in Edinburgh - completely out of character. She's not just any student, though, but the daughter of extremely well-to-do and influential bankers. There's almost nothing to go on until Detective Inspector John Rebus gets an unmistakable gut feeling that there's more to this than just another runaway spaced out on unaccustomed freedom or worse. Two leads emerge: a carved wooden doll in a toy coffin, found in the student's home village, and an Internet role-playing game. The ancient and the modern, brought together by uncomfortable circumstance and a curmudgeonly detective happier with long playing records than digital technology ...In this powerful novel, Rankin, who 'moves dialogue with the precision of a chess-master', (Irish Times) brings together past, present and future in a terrifying duel of good - in the persons of DI Rebus and DC Siobhan Clarke - and evil.

Saints of the Shadow Bible

by Ian Rankin

Published 7 November 2013

Rebus is back on the force, albeit with a demotion and a chip on his shoulder. A 30-year-old case is being reopened, and Rebus's team from back then is suspected of foul play. With Malcolm Fox as the investigating officer are the past and present about to collide in a shocking and murderous fashion? And does Rebus have anything to hide?

His colleagues back then called themselves 'the Saints', and swore a bond on something called 'the Shadow Bible'. But times have changed and the crimes of the past may not stay hidden much longer, especially with a referendum on Scottish independence just around the corner.

Who are the saints and who the sinners? And can the one ever become the other?

Features a bonus interview with Ian Rankin and James MacPherson

Read by James MacPherson. JAMES MACPHERSON played DCI Jardine in Taggart for sixteen years, and has acted on stage in plays as diverse as The Taming of the Shrew and ART by Yasmina Reza. He has presented a regular books programme for Radio Scotland - for which he has interviewed Ian Rankin. He won a Spoken Word Gold Award for his reading of Strip Jack, a Crimefest Audible UK Sounds of Crime Award for Doors Open and has narrated all the Ian Rankin Rebus books. James lives in Glasgow.

(p) 2013 Orion Publishing Group

Even Dogs in the Wild

by Ian Rankin

Published 5 November 2015

Retirement doesn't suit John Rebus. He wasn't made for hobbies, holidays or home improvements. Being a cop is in his blood.

So when DI Siobhan Clarke asks for his help on a case, Rebus doesn't need long to consider his options.

Clarke's been investigating the death of a senior lawyer whose body was found along with a threatening note. On the other side of Edinburgh, Big Ger Cafferty - Rebus's long-time nemesis - has received an identical note and a bullet through his window.

Now it's up to Clarke and Rebus to connect the dots and stop a killer.

Even Dogs in the Wild brings back Ian Rankin's greatest characters in a story exploring the darkest corners of our instincts and desires.

Read by James Macpherson

(p) 2015 Orion Publishing Group

Resurrection Men

by Ian Rankin

Published 2 January 2002

Rebus is off the case - quite literally. A few days into a murder inquiry following the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at his superior, DCS Gill Templer, and is sent into purdah. Which, in his case, means the Scottish Police College, sited on the edge of a village in central Scotland. Rebus has been sent there for 'retraining'. In other words, it's his Last Chance Saloon. He is not alone. At the college, he is put into a group of similar officers - people who have a problem with the very institution which houses them. They are given an old unsolved case to work on. It will hopefully teach them the merits of teamwork, while allowing professionals the chance to assess this unholy 'wild bunch'. But there are those in the team who have their own secrets - secrets not unconnected to the very case they've been given - and they'll stop at nothing to protect them. As if that wasn't enough, the Scottish Crime Squad have a favour to ask of Rebus. They think they've found someone who can deliver the inside info on the east coast's biggest gangster, 'Big Ger' Cafferty. All they need is a link-man, someone to act as go-between.They've decided on Rebus, whether he likes it or not.
Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, newly-promoted Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke must work the case of the murdered art dealer, a case which will take her closer to Cafferty and his world than she could ever have anticipated...

A Question of Blood

by Ian Rankin

Published 22 August 2003

Two seventeen-year-olds are killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. As Detective Inspector John Rebus puts it, 'there's no mystery ...except the why'. But this question takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, and finds he is not alone. Army investigators are on the scene, and won't be shaken off. The killer had friends and enemies to spare and left behind a legacy of secrets and lies. Rebus has more than his share of personal problems, too. He's fresh out of hospital, hands heavily bandaged, and he won't say how it happened. Could there be a connection with a house-fire and the unfortunate death of a petty criminal who had been harassing Rebus's colleague Siobhan Clarke? Rebus's bosses seem to think so ...

A Good Hanging

by Ian Rankin

Published 1 June 1998

Edinburgh is a city steeped in history and tradition, a seat of learning, of elegant living, known as the 'Athens of the North'. But that isn't all. The city's flip-side is a city of grudges, blackmail, violence, greed and fear - where past and present clash and old wounds fester. In any year Detective Inspector John Rebus can expect gang warfare, murder, assault and battery at the very least. In this collection he investigates the hanging of a student actor during the Festival, an arson attack on a bird watcher and the witnessing of an apparent miracle...

Let it Bleed

by Ian Rankin

Published 21 August 1995

Struggling through another Edinburgh winter Rebus finds himself sucked into a web of intrigue that throws up more questions than answers. Was the Lord Provost's daughter kidnapped or just another runaway? Why is a city councillor shredding documents that should have been waste paper years ago? And why on earth is Rebus invited to a clay pigeon shoot at the home of the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary? Sucked into the machine that is modern Scotland, Rebus confronts the fact that some of his enemies may be beyond justice...

The Black Book

by Ian Rankin

Published 12 August 1993

When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws. But not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself ...

Hide and Seek

by Ian Rankin

Published 14 March 1991

A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above. Just another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the Edinburgh familiar to tourists. Only Rebus seems to care about a death which looks more like a murder every day, about a seductive danger he can almost taste, appealing to the darkest corners of his mind ...

Knots and Crosses

by Ian Rankin

Published 19 March 1987

A crime story set in Edinburgh where a murderer is on the loose. The victims are young girls and Detective John Rebus is also being plagued by anonymous letters accompanied by pieces of knotted string and little matchstick crosses. To cap it all his wife has deserted him. Ian Rankin's first novel is entitled "The Flood".

Fleshmarket Alley

by Ian Rankin

Published 1 January 2005

Edinburgh investigator John Rebus pursues a case in the city's red-light district, where refugees seeking asylum in Scotland are subject to the most ruthless members of the crime world.

Mortal Causes

by Ian Rankin

Published 7 August 1995

The last people to die in Mary King's Close had been plague victims. But that was in the 1700s. Now a body has been discovered, brutally tortured and murdered in Edinburgh's buried city. Inspector John Rebus, ex-army, spots a paramilitary link. It is August in Edinburgh, the Festival is in full swing. No one wants to contemplate terrorism in the thronging city streets. Special Branch are interested, however, and Rebus finds himself seconded to an elite police unit with the mission of smashing whatever terrorist cell may exist. But the victim turns out to be a gangster's son, and the gangster wants revenge on his own terms.

Exit Music

by Ian Rankin

Published 6 September 2007

It's late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence a high-level delegation of Russian businessmen is in town, keen to bring business to Scotland. The politicians and bankers who run Edinburgh are determined that the case should be closed quickly and clinically. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and his colleague DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that they are dealing with something more than a random attack - especially after a particularly nasty second killing. Meantime, a brutal and premeditated assault on local gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty sees Rebus in the frame. Has the Inspector taken a step too far in tying up those loose ends? Only a few days shy of the end to his long, inglorious career, will Rebus even make it that far?

Tooth And Nail

by Ian Rankin

Published 1 May 1996

The third Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES
'No one writes better crime novels' EVENING STANDARD

They call him the Wolfman - because he takes a bite out of his victims and because they found the first victim in the East End's lonely Wolf Street. Scotland Yard are anxious to find the killer and Inspector Rebus is drafted in to help. But his Scotland Yard opposite number, George Flight, isn't happy at yet more interference, and Rebus finds himself dealing with racial prejudice as well as the predations of a violent maniac.

When Rebus is offered a serial killer profile of the Wolfman by an attractive female psychologist, it's too good an opportunity to miss. But in finding an ally, he may have given his enemies an easy means of attack.

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Ian Rankin's A HEART FULL OF HEADSTONES was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 10th October 2022 and w/c 1st May 2023