Sir Ian Rankin (born 28 April 1960 in Cardenden, Fife) is a Scottish crime writer best known for the Inspector Rebus novels, a series set mainly in Edinburgh that began with “Knots and Crosses” in 1987 and reached its twenty-fifth book with “Midnight and Blue” in 2024. The Rebus books have sold more than 35 million copies.
Rankin was the first member of his family to go to university. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982 and began a doctorate on Muriel Spark there, which he did not finish. Before writing full time he worked as a grape picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist and college secretary, and played in a punk band called the Dancing Pigs. His first novel, “The Flood”, appeared in 1986. He lived in London and then rural France while building his career, and he has said that he thought of his early Rebus books as mainstream fiction and was disconcerted to see them shelved as crime.
The eighth Rebus novel, “Black and Blue” (1997), won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger, and “Resurrection Men” won the Edgar Award in 2004. In 2005 Rankin received the CWA Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. He was appointed OBE in 2002 and knighted in 2022 for services to literature and charity.
Outside the main series, Rankin wrote three thrillers in the mid 1990s as Jack Harvey and introduced a second detective, Malcolm Fox, in “The Complaints” (2009). Fox has appeared alongside Rebus since “Standing in Another Man’s Grave” (2012). Rankin also wrote the graphic novel “Dark Entries”, and in 2021 he completed “The Dark Remains” from a manuscript left unfinished by William McIlvanney.
ITV dramatised thirteen of the Rebus novels between 2000 and 2007, with John Hannah and later Ken Stott in the lead. A new six-part “Rebus” starring Richard Rankin (no relation) began on BBC One in May 2024, and a second series was commissioned in 2025.
His most recent book is “The Heights”, published on 8 October 2026 and described by his publisher as his first standalone thriller in two decades. It follows Detective Gillian Gish as she investigates the murder of a night concierge in a luxury high-rise overlooking Hyde Park in London.
