Rankin, Ian

Ian Rankin, in full Ian James Rankin, pseudonym Jack Harvey, (born April 28, 1960, Cardenden, Fife, Scotland), Scottish best-selling crime novelist, creator of the Inspector Rebus series. (For Rankin’s reflections on the Scottish capital, see Edinburgh: A City of Stories.)

Rankin grew up in a small coal-mining town, where at a young age he displayed a talent for writing poetry. He studied English literature at the University of Edinburgh, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1982. While working on a never-finished Ph.D. in Scottish literature, he began writing the story that would become his first novel, The Flood (1986). It was published by a student-run press in Edinburgh. Set in a small town based on Rankin’s own birthplace, the debut was an exploration of the prejudices and superstitions of a fading community as reflected in its casting out of a young townswoman believed to be a witch.

In 1987 Rankin’s earliest crime novel, Knots & Crosses, introduced the character Inspector John Rebus, a rough-edged former military man serving in Scotland’s territorial police force. Rankin, who claimed to have had no intention of being a genre novelist, strayed for several years afterward from depicting what would become his most popular character, writing two unrelated novels in the interim. In 1990 he released his second book featuring the inspector. Rebus’s career continued to unfold in the ensuing decades, and in 1997 the eighth novel in the series, Black and Blue, became Rankin’s first international best seller. Inspired by the case of an unidentified serial killer thought to have operated in Glasgow in the 1960s, the work was the basis of the first episode of the Rankin-penned Rebus, a 14-part television program based on the book series that aired in the United Kingdom in 2000–07.

In 2007 Rankin published Exit Music, in which Rebus retires. Though Rankin maintained at the time that it was to be the last novel in the series, the superannuated Rebus was on the case again in Standing in Another Man’s Grave (2012), Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013), Even Dogs in the Wild (2016), In a House of Lies (2018), and A Song for the Dark Times (2020); the latter was the 23rd installment in the series. The Rebus books gave Rankin an opportunity to depict Scotland, in particular Edinburgh, in high, often bloody colour. Through the authority-flouting inspector’s investigations, which played out in classic police-procedure style, the capital city emerges as a vibrant, textured place, filled with secretive corners and strange historical echoes. The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Short Stories (2014) collected his short fiction featuring the hard-bitten inspector. The play Rebus: Long Shadows, which Rankin wrote with Rona Munro, debuted in 2018.

In addition to his Rebus works, Rankin wrote a handful of thrillers under the name Jack Harvey between 1993 and 1995. He later released The Complaints (2009) and The Impossible Dead (2011), which feature another Scottish cop protagonist, Malcolm Fox; the character subsequently appeared in several books in the Rebus series. Dark Entries (2009) is a graphic novel centring on an occult detective’s investigation of a haunted reality television show set.

Rankin gained international recognition for his work, which was translated into more than 20 languages. His honours included a Raymond Chandler Fulbright fellowship (1991) and the Cartier Diamond Dagger, presented to him by the Crime Writers’ Association in 2005. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2003.