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.
'Britain's finest detective novelist' Scotland on Sunday
'[Rebus] is a superbly drawn character; matched by the edgy authenticity of the Scottish locale and dialogue' Sunday Times
'Very ambitious and very confident with acute observation of the not so bonny side of Scotland' Daily Telegraph
Author
About Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin was born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into thirty-six languages and are bestsellers worldwide. Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America's celebrated Edgar Award for Resurrection Men. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Award in the USA, won Denmark's Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the Deutscher Krimipreis. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University.A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts. Rankin is a number one bestseller in the UK and has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.
