Showing results by author "Ian Rankin" in All Categories

Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - who might just lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he's doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow's Mr Big. As if this wasn't enough, there are TV cameras at his back investigating a miscarriage of justice, making Rebus a criminal in the eyes of a million or more viewers. Just one mistake is likely to mean an unpleasant and not particularly speedy death or, worse still, losing his job.

John Rebus spent his life as a detective putting Edinburgh’s most deadly criminals behind bars. Now, he’s going to join them…

Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners.

Detective Inspector John Rebus is not a man easily intimidated, so when political heavyweights start to lean on the dour, moralistic Edinburgh detective to stop an investigation, Rebus doggedly digs in and follows the case as it moves from embezzlement to murder and finally to conspiracy at the highest level of government.

As he settles into an uneasy retirement, Rebus has given up his favorite vices. There's just one habit he can't shake: He can't let go of an unsolved case. It's the only pastime he has left, and up until now it's the only one that wasn't threatening to kill him. But when Rebus starts reexamining the facts behind the long-ago murder of a glamorous woman at a luxurious hotel - on the same night a famous rock star and his entourage were also staying there - the past comes roaring back to life with a vengeance.

The leaders of the free world descend on Scotland for an international conference, and every cop in the country is needed for front-line duty - except one. John Rebus' reputation precedes him, and his bosses don't want him anywhere near Presidents Bush and Putin, which explains why he's manning an abandoned police station when a call comes in. During a preconference dinner at Edinburgh Castle, a delegate has fallen to his death. Accident, suicide, or something altogether more sinister?

Nobody likes The Complaints—they're the cops who investigate other cops. It's a department known within the force as The Dark Side, and it's where Malcolm Fox works. He's a serious man with a father in a nursing home and a sister who persists in an abusive relationship, frustrating problems about which he cannot seem to do anything.

Detective John Rebus' city is being terrorized by a baffling series of murders…and he's tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood. As the ghoulish killings mount and the tabloid headlines scream, Rebus cannot stop the feverish shrieks from within his own mind. Because he isn't just one cop trying to catch a killer - he's the man who's got all the pieces to the puzzle…

When a former soldier and recluse murders two 17-year-old students at a posh Edinburgh boarding school, Inspector John Rebus immediately suspects there is more to the case than meets the eye.

Brilliant, irascible, and frequently frustrating to both his friends and his long-suffering bosses, John Rebus has made the dark places of Edinburgh his home for over two decades. The Beat Goes On collects all of Ian Rankin's Rebus short stories for the first time, including two never-before-published tales written specifically for this collection.

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is feeling the heat. She's investigating the death of a senior government prosecutor, David Minton, who has friends in high places. When one of their own is killed, the powers that be want answers fast. But Clarke is puzzled: If Minton died in a robbery as everyone thinks, why is nothing missing from his home? The answer may lie not in what was taken but in what was left behind at the scene - an ominous note.

John Rebus spent his life as a detective putting Edinburgh's most deadly criminals behind bars. Now, he's going to join them... In this tense, gripping game of cat and mouse, 'The King of Crime' (Express) returns to his much-loved creation, the inimitable John Rebus, as he faces a case unlike any other...

A colleague's suicide. Pedophiles. A missing child. A serial killer. You never know your luck, muses Rebus. Driven by instinct and experience, he searches for connections, against official skepticism. But at night, unsoothed by whiskey, Rebus faces his ghosts, and the prospect of his daughter's possibly permanent paralysis. Soldiering through dank, desperate slums and the tiny flats of the Scottish chic, Rebus uncovers a chain of crime, deceit, and hidden sins.

A murder has been committed - but as the victim was a rapist, recently released from prison, no one is too concerned about the crime. That is, until Detective Inspector John Rebus and DS Siobhan Clarke uncover evidence that a serial killer is on the loose...When Rebus also starts looking into the apparent suicide of an MP, he is abruptly warned off the case, not least because the G8 leaders have gathered in Scotland, and Rebus's bosses want him well out of the way.

It's late in the fall in Edinburgh and late in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he is simply trying to tie up some loose ends before his retirement, a new case lands on his desk: a dissident Russian poet has been murdered in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. Rebus discovers that an elite delegation of Russian businessmen is in town, looking to expand its interests. And as Rebus' investigation gains ground, someone brutally assaults a local gangster with whom he has a long history.

For the last decade, Nina Hazlitt has been ready to hear the worst about her daughter's disappearance. But with no sightings, no body, and no suspect, the police investigation ground to a halt long ago, and Nina's pleas to the cold case department have led her nowhere. Until she meets the newest member of the team: former Detective John Rebus. Rebus has never shied away from lost causes - one of the many ways he managed to antagonize his bosses when he was on the force. Now he's back as a retired civilian, reviewing abandoned files.

Rebus and Malcolm Fox go head-to-head when a 30-year-old murder investigation resurfaces, forcing Rebus to confront crimes of the past. Rebus is back on the force, albeit with a demotion and a chip on his shoulder. He is investigating a car accident when news arrives that a case from 30 years ago is being reopened. Rebus's team from those days is suspected of helping a murderer escape justice to further their own ends.

In Edinburgh you're never far from a peaceful spot, or from a hellish one either. Now, in the heart of summer, in the midst of a nationalist festival, Inspector John Rebus is on the murder case of a young man left hanging in a spot where his screams would never be heard. To find the victim's identity - and his killer - Rebus searches from Edinburgh's most violent neighborhood to Belfast, Northern Ireland, among petty thugs, gunrunners, and heavyweight criminals. But before Rebus can get to the truth, he's bloodied by the dream of society's madmen - and staring into the glint of a killer's eyes.

Inspector John Rebus has messed up badly this time, so badly that he's been sent to a kind of reform school for damaged cops. While there among the last-chancers known as "resurrection men," he joins a covert mission to gain evidence of a drug heist orchestrated by three of his classmates. But the group has been assigned an unsolved murder that may have resulted from Rebus's own mistake.

In a shadowy, crumbling Edinburgh housing development, a junkie lies dead of an overdose, his body surrounded by signs of Satanic worship. Inspector John Rebus could call it an accident. But won’t. Now he’s got to search the city, from the tunnels of its dark underbelly to the private sanctum of the upper crust, to find the perfect hiding place for a killer.