By Ian Rankin
Detective novels based in and around the Edinburgh area, the focus of these stories is the character Inspector John Rebus. All the gritty novels involve murders, suspicious deaths or disappearances, with Rebus taking on the task of solving the mystery.
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Description: Detective John Rebus: His city is being terrorized by a baffling series of murders…and he’s tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood.
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Description: In a crumbling housing development in Edinburgh, a junkie lies dead of an overdose, his body surrounded by signs of Satanic worship. John Rebus tracks down a young woman who knew the dead boy and heard him cry out his terrifying last words: “Hide! Hide!”
Tooth and Nail (1992)
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Description: What begins as a case of typical British indiscretion, when a prominent member of Parliament is caught in a police raid on an Edinburgh brothel, turns into a nasty murder investigation when his party-happy wife is soon found beaten to death. It’s up to Inspector Rebus to learn whether the MP is self-destructing, or the victim of a cruel set-up.
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Description: When the Central Hotel burned to the ground in a mysterious fire, the Edinburgh police were unable to disguise their delight. That is, until a body was found in the still-smoldering ashes, charred beyond all identification but with a bullet lodged in its skull.
Mortal Causes (1994)
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Description: Rebus realizes that there’s nothing simple about his latest case. He discovers that beneath the killings a conspiracy is hidden, one that runs all the way to the top of the political ladder.
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Description: Inspector Rebus is on the trail of a copycat murderer named Bible Johnny. From the jungles of Edinburgh’s toughest suburbs, to the bleak frontiers of Aberdeen’s oil rigs, and eventually to the endangerment of his own family, John Rebus must find a killer–before the madman finds him first.
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Description: Tough and complex, Detective John Rebus gets personally involved in a case when he rescues a young Bosnian girl forced into prostitution.
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Description: Stalking the streets of Edinburgh on the trail of a poisoner, Rebus hits upon a freed pedophile and his subsequent outing of the man leaves him with very mixed feelings. But another problem develops for Rebus: a convicted murderer has him in his sights for some lethal games.
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Description: A man dead for twenty years is found behind a wall in the renovated Parliament Building of newly independent Scotland.
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Description: Rebus is almost certain that missing university student Philippa Balfour is dead, but he’s less sure how she died or what her misadventure has to do with the tiny doll in a hand-sized coffin that turns up near a waterfall on the Balfour family estate.
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Description: The rebellious Rebus has gone too far – his latest insubordination lands him in Tulliallan, a police college, for retraining. Rebus soon suspects there’s something shady going on.
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Description: Rebus and his partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke are trying to close the case of an ex-soldier named Lee Herdman, who apparently shot three teenage boys at a Scottish private school, leaving two of them dead, before turning the pistol on himself.
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Description: Rebus and Clarke race around investigating a variety of seemingly unconnected cases.
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Description: 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.
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Description: As Rebus 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.
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Description: John Rebus returns to investigate the disappearances of three women from the same road over ten years.
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Description: Rebus and Malcolm Fox go head-to-head when a 30-year-old murder investigation resurfaces, forcing Rebus to confront crimes of the past.