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 proceduraldetective 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 depict a stark, uncompromising picture of Scotland, particularly Edinburgh, 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, and 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. Rankin does this in such a way that reading them in order, prior knowledge of the Rebus 'history' is not 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. Rebus is an old-fashioned man who bottles things up and lets them affect his personal life. Apart from his daughter Sammy he has five women in his life: Rhona, his separated wife; Patience Aitken, his ex-girlfriend; Gill Templer, his immediate boss and sometime girlfriend; Jean Burchill, lady friend and friend of Gill Templer, who first appears in The Falls; and, in the later books, particularly when Rebus is retired, his girlfriend is Deborah Quant, a pathologist. The series also focuses on the character of Rebus's protege, DS Siobhan Clarke. Clarke first appears in The Black Book, and continues to have a larger role as the series goes on. Music plays a large part in the Rebus novels. In the first several novels, Rebus is a jazz enthusiast, listening to the likes of Miles Davis. However, by the publication of the 1997 Gold Dagger Award-winning Black and Blue, Rebus's musical taste has shifted towards classic and progressive rock. Musical groups and tracks are often directly mentioned in Rankin’s novels, whether playing on Rebus’s Hi-Fi, or in his car, or passed between characters on mix tapes or borrowed albums. Music also weaves throughout the narrative, setting the scene, or making a pun - such as ‘Born to Be Wild’ by Steppenwolf in Tooth and Nail, or a scene in The Hanging Garden where ‘Psycho Killer’ by the Talking Heads plays in Rebus’s car. Several bands appear in Rankin’s works multiple times, such The Rolling Stones, Joy Division, Wishbone Ash, Rory Gallagher, The Cure, The Velvet Underground, and many more.
Publishing history
The Inspector Rebus series is commercially successful in the United Kingdom, accounting for an estimated 10% of all crime book sales in the UK as of 2015. The books routinely sell half a million copies each, and have been translated into 36 languages. As of 2015 they are published in the UK by the Orion Publishing Group. The seventeenth was thought to be the last as Rebus turned sixty, the age of retirement for CID officers, but at the Hay Festival in June 2012 Rankin announced a further book, entitled Standing in Another Man's Grave, subsequently released in November 2012.
- non-fiction book discussing the background to the Rebus novels.
Audiobooks
All of the Rebus novels are available as audiobooks, some in several versions: narrated by different people or in abridged and unabridged form. Narrators include:
Three of the novels have won : Strip Jack, A Question of Blood and Resurrection Men. An innovative new design, the illustrated audiobook was created for Rebus's Scotland.
Thirteen 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 for the next three. Series four of the programme also included an original episode, which unlike the other thirteen episodes aired, was not based on any of the Rankin novels. It was entitled "The First Stone".
Radio
starred as Rebus in BBC Radio 4's dramatizations of The Falls, Resurrection Men, Black and Blue, Strip Jack, The Black Book, Set in Darkness and A Question of Blood, having previously played Rebus's Chief Constable in the TV series.
Stage
A brand new story written for the stage by Ian Rankin and adapted by playwright Rona Munro entitled Rebus: Long Shadows had its premiere at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 20 September 2018 before touring the UK. The production was directed by Roxana Silbert and starred Charles Lawson as Rebus.
