John Rebus: A Mysterious Profile

By Ian Rankin

The New York Times–bestselling author tells the story behind Inspector Rebus, the hard-edged Edinburgh cop and "superbly drawn character" (The Times, London).

 


In this short work, Edgar and Diamond Dagger Award winner Ian Rankin delves into DI John Rebus's origins as a character, as well as his own origins as a writer. While author and character share a love of literature and a deep affection for Scotland's capital city, they differ in other ways, as Rankin entertainingly testifies, while revealing how this "compelling figure" has developed over the course of his long-running series of gritty crime novels (Kirkus Reviews).


 


"[A] hard-drinking, chain-smoking, terminally melancholic hero . . . trapped in a world where mavericks are an endangered species." —Booklist

 


"Rebus is without doubt one of the funniest among the classical fictional detectives." —The Guardian

 


"With his stubborn insistence on tying up the frayed ends of every knotty clue, and iconoclastic refusal to be a team player . . . Rebus is a bane to his superiors but a blessing to readers." —Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504074551

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin is the multimillion-copy worldwide bestseller of over thirty novels and creator of John Rebus. His books have been translated into thirty-six languages and have been adapted for radio, the stage and the screen. Rankin is the recipient of four Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards, including the Diamond Dagger, the UK's most prestigious award for crime fiction. In the United States, he has won the celebrated Edgar Award and been shortlisted for the Anthony Award. In Europe, he has won Denmark's Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the German Deutscher Krimipreis. He is the recipient of honorary degrees from universities across the UK, is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, and has received an OBE for his services to literature. Website: IanRankin.net X: @Beathhigh Facebook: IanRankinBooks

Book preview

John Rebus

A Mysterious Profile

Ian Rankin

I

Male hero (a policeman?)

That was my first note to myself, dated March 15th 1985, about the character who would eventually become Detective Inspector John Rebus. I was twenty-four years old and a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh. I was living in a shared apartment with two other (female) postgrads in Arden Street. I’d been in the city six-and-a-half years, and still I couldn’t fathom the place. My doctoral thesis was concentrating on the novelist Muriel Spark, and through her I was beginning to investigate the Edinburgh of the imagination. In Spark’s most celebrated work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Miss Brodie is a descendant of William Brodie, a real historical character. Brodie was a deacon of the city, a councillor, cabinet-maker and a man who lived a double life. Respectable and industrious by day, by night he led a masked gang into the homes of his victims, robbing them of their valuables. Brodie was trying to fund his lavish lifestyle (including a couple of demanding mistresses), and had diversified into lock-fitting,