I have to wonder if Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad was influenced by Rankin. I think he did a good job of portraying cops as real people. The mystery wasn't really solveable but I think Knots and Crosses was more of a setup book than anything else. He's a sad bastard in a long line of sad bastard detectives but has enough uniqueness that I'll be happy to visit him again in the future. Rebus has a lot baggage, from his stage hypnotist brother to his ex-wife and everything in between. Rebus' buried past lurks on the periphery of his day to day life with the Edinburgh PD, much like Lord Peter's. John Rebus reminded me of a lot of detectives from the time Knots and Crosses was written, like Elvis Cole, for instance, but what he really reminded me of was a late 1980's version of Dorothy Sayers' shell-shocked aristocrat detective, Lord Peter Whimsey. When the past comes knocking at his door, it's time to pay the piper. Fifteen years later, he's divorced with a teenage daughter and has large blank areas in his past. John Rebus left the SAS under mysterious circumstances and joined the police department. As the first book in a mystery series, it has a lot of heavy lifting to do, which it does quite well. When this one turned up during one of my semi-weekly visits, I decided it was time. The mother-in-law of the owner of my favorite used bookstore has been on my ass for years to give the Inspector Rebus books a shot.

But what, if anything, do the disappearances have to do with bizarre letters Rebus has been getting in the post? Girls are being kidnapped and murdered around Edinburgh and John Rebus is on the case. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, and Edinburgh.Ī contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award, and he received two Dagger Awards for the year's best short story and the Gold Dagger for Fiction. Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987 the Rebus books are now translated into 22 languages and are bestsellers on several continents. 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.

Ian rankin knots and crosses review