Detective Inspector John Rebus is the protagonist of the Inspector Rebus series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Sir Ian Rankin, which have been adapted for the stage, radio and television.
Rebus is introduced in Rankin's second novel Knots and Crosses (1987) as a Detective Sergeant in the Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a misanthropic, deceitful, curmudgeonly and self-loathing ex-SAS serviceman who flouts authority and revels in "old-school" detective work; his flaws often exacerbated by both the nature of his occupation and his inclination to drink and smoke heavily. His partner, DC Siobhan "Shiv" Clarke, who first appears in The Black Book (1993), acts as his foil, protégé and trusted friend. She shares his workaholic tendencies, but is better versed in newer methods and technologies which Rebus avoids, and must often manage his unpredictable nature.
In adaptations for the stage, radio and screen, the character has been portrayed by numerous actors. These adaptations, like the novels, are mostly set in and around Edinburgh. In 2014, Rebus was ranked as the third-most popular Scottish literary character in an international poll.
In the books
In the series of books and short stories by Ian Rankin, beginning with Knots and Crosses published in 1987, John Rebus is a detective in the Lothian and Borders Police, stationed in Edinburgh. After the first book, he is promoted from Detective Sergeant to Detective Inspector. In novels published after his retirement at the end of Exit Music, Rebus continues to work with Lothian and Borders Police either as a civilian or again as a police officer, but only in a temporary capacity.
Backstory
Knots and Crosses was originally written as a stand-alone, non-genre novel and presents the fullest portrait of Rebus as a literary character. He comes the town of Cardenden in Fife (Rankin's own home town) where his parents are buried and where his only sibling Michael still lives. His father made a living as a stage hypnotist; Michael is also a success in the profession. John is divorced from Rhona and has a daughter, Samantha, who is nearly twelve.
Rebus went from school into the army and, after a difficult stint in Northern Ireland at the beginning of The Troubles, signed up for the SAS. There, he and another man were subjected to various kinds of torture in an attempt to see whether they would “break”. Rebus passed the test but, having had to abandon his companion, had a nervous breakdown himself. After recovering, he became a police detective. In Knots and Crosses he suffers from PTSD (unnamed), which is cured when his brother hypnotizes him.
In subsequent novels, more about Rebus’s background is revealed. In the first few novels, Rebus likes jazz music, but by the fourth one he admits to being partial to the Rolling Stones. From that point on, his favourite music is always folk and rock from his own youth; in addition to that of the author."I decided that my main character, DI John Rebus, should share some of my own taste in music, which is why he ended up listening to John Martyn, Van Morrison . . . and Jackie Leven," Rankin recalled in an article, "And pigs might fly," The Times 7 May 2005. In Fleshmarket Close, which deals with immigrant trafficking, Rebus recalls that his paternal grandfather was a Polish immigrant. In Dead Souls, he recalls his school-leaving party in Cardenden and his ill-fated plans to get a job and settle down with his childhood sweetheart.
Rebus lives in the flat he bought with his wife Rhona in the 1970s, on Arden Street in the Marchmont area of Edinburgh. During his relationship with Patience Aitken, he spends a lot of time at her flat and even rents his apartment out to students in The Black Book, though he has to move back in with them when Patience kicks him out. In The Falls, he has the flat rewired with an eye to selling it, but changes his mind. In A Song for the Dark Times, the garden flat in his own building has become vacant and he moves in as this will save him the difficult two-flight climb to his old flat.
Starting with Black and Blue, Rebus drives an older Saab 900. Before that, he had admired a Saab and wished he could afford one (in Strip Jack). In some of the later novels, he talks to the Saab, thanking it for making long trips, and he is relieved in A Song for the Dark Times when it can be repaired. In Even Dogs in the Wild, he acquires a dog, Brillo.
Age
As Rankin developed Knots and Crosses into a series of crime stories, he allowed Rebus’s life to continue as if he were living in real time. Thus, in Knots and Crosses (1987) his daughter Samantha is “nearly twelve” and in Tooth and Nail (1992) she is about sixteen. By the year 2000, Rankin was aware that Rebus was approaching 60, the age of compulsory retirement for police. Despite some indecision about Rebus’s actual age,According to Knots and Crosses, Chapter 16, John was conceived when his father “was on one of his last leaves” from the Army during the Second World War, which would imply John was born in 1944 or 1945. In an interview in 2000, however, Rankin referred to Rebus as being 38 years old in 1987, which would put his birthdate as late as 1949: J. Kingston Pierce, “Ian Rankin, the Accidental Crime Writer” January Magazine, January 2000. Rankin settled on 1947 as the protagonist’s year of birth and 2007 as his year of retirement.In 2005, Helen Eadie, MSP for an area including Rebus’s hometown of Cardenden, spoke up in the Scottish Parliament about changing the police retirement age in order to prolong Rebus’s career. Greig Cameron, “I don’t need a Re-bus pass: MSP throws fictional cop a lifeline,” Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail, 8 September 2005. More recently, since Rebus's retirement, Rankin has admitted that the character is no longer ageing in real time and that he imagines Rebus as being in his late sixties in 2020, with some disabilities but still physically as well as mentally capable.Ian Rankin: A Rebus for the Dark Times, interview with Ruth Wishart at the 2020 Edinburgh International Book Festival, at 9:45. Rankin had expressed in a 2017 interview that “In my head he is mid-sixties” (at a time when he should have been turning 70);
Although it is possible to summarize Rebus’s character and habits, he changes over the years.Ian Rankin has commented a number of times that Rebus is always changing, which makes him worth writing about. Early on, for example, he is ambitious, but as time goes by he sees that promotion would take him away from the hands-on investigative style he loves. To take another example, although his relationship with his daughter Samantha is a matter of rare phone calls for over a decade, they have more frequent visits after her daughter Carrie is born. In Dead Souls, his reflexive bullying of paedophiles in earlier books is gradually replaced by the realization that some of them, at least, have suffered abuse themselves.
Character and habits
John Lanchester, in an article written originally for the London Review of Books in 2000, says of Rebus: Stubbornness is Rebus's most deep-seated characteristic. All the various ways in which he could improve the quality of his life - which boil down essentially to his being less impossible - are somehow unthinkable. He stands in everybody else's way, but he stands in his own way too: difficult, determined, remorseless, honourable, honest, and proud of his lack of charm. He is a deeply Scottish self-image…. Melanie McGrath, in a review of Even Dogs in the Wild, takes a slightly different view: … an intensely romanticised, self-dramatising lone wolf, a kind of urban cowboy driven to detection as a means of resolving his existential crisis. As Rebus himself puts it, if justice didn’t matter, “then neither did he”.Melanie McGrath, “Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin review – a satisfying return for Rebus,” The Guardian 23 October 2015.
Rebus loves to make jokes at the expense of others, especially his superiors and his friends. At times he even examines his own parting words, judging whether they were clever enough.In a 2017 discussion in Australia, Rankin notes that “It can take me weeks to come up with a great one-liner for Rebus.” Ian Rankin with Shane Maloney, WheelerCentre, May 28 2017. He spars verbally with Siobhan Clarke but also with ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty.
Rebus's sense of honour is questionable and he will lie to a witness swearing that “this is just between the two of us”, with no intention of keeping pertinent information private. He treats the criminal Cafferty’s influence and knowledge as a resource in his investigations and will sometimes do a favour for him. In Cafferty’s mind (and the minds of many others), Rebus belongs to him, but in Rebus’s own mind he is always fighting Cafferty and trying to collect evidence of his crimes.
Rebus is a heavy drinker and smoker, though always aware that this is bad for his health. He chooses to eat fried and/or fatty foods, knowing they are not good for him. His knowledge of Edinburgh bars and his appreciation of malt whiskies are encyclopaedic. Starting with Mortal Causes, his favourite hangout and meeting-place is the Oxford Bar, and from Exit Music to Rather Be the Devil, the ritual of going outside the bar to smoke is part of his routine. In Black and Blue, with the help of his old friend Jack Morton he stops drinking and is able to continue abstaining through the next book, The Hanging Garden. However, at the end of that novel Jack dies and Rebus resumes drinking. From one novel to another he may try to ration cigarettes, but he is not able to quit smoking entirely until he begins to suffer from COPD at the beginning of Rather Be the Devil — at that time he also begins to cut back on his drinking.
Music is important to Rebus, though he does not play an instrument himself. He has an extensive collection of vinyl, augmented when his brother Michael dies and leaves him records from their youth (The Naming of the Dead). It is not until Mortal Causes, however, that his love of rock and folk from the 1960s and 70s is firmly established. In Black and Blue, The Hanging Garden, and Dead Souls, Rebus’s stream of consciousness is sometimes presented as a series of song and album names, which both identify and dismiss his emotional reactions to a situation. Starting with Set in Darkness, he plays a game with Siobhan Clarke of reciting song names and expecting her to identify them. Clarke gives him newer music to listen to, and forms opinions about his favourites, too. In A Song for the Dark Times, she tells their friend Fox, ”John says he wants it put on his gravestone: ‘He listened to the B-sides.’” Books are important to him, but his interest tends to be aspirational; he struggles with the sense that he might (or might not) have done better if he had had better educational opportunities. Especially in the earlier novels, there are references to piles of unread books in his apartment, and to the fact that his wife Rhona, an English teacher, took many of the books originally in the apartment when she left him. Aside from Crime and Punishment, he doesn’t actually read much.
Rebus's interest in politics is informed by a deep scepticism. Rankin considers him to be "small-c conservative" and therefore unlikely to support political change; at one point in Strip Jack (1992), he tells his friends Brian and Nell that he has only voted three times in his life, "Once Labour, once SNP, and once Tory." On the other hand, when Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested in a public venue that Rebus would have voted pro-Brexit, Rankin was taken aback."Ian Rankin tells Nicola Sturgeon: 'Rebus would have voted no to Scottish independence,'" The Scotsman 22 September 2019.