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By any standards Ian Rankin - with his immortal and now, it seems, retired Detective Inspector John Rebus - is among our foremost crime writers; but more than that, among our foremost writers of any sort. With a string of national and international awards, translations into more than 20 languages, and a vast and loyal following of readers who still can't believe that Rebus has gone, he has taken the detective story format and run with it, far ahead of all the rest. The Rebus books - and I have read almost all of them - are social documents: fast and gripping stories, grounded in detail and often paralleling real events, and rich in character and social observation too. Rebus himself is a masterly creation: by no means an ideal policeman, but one convincingly portrayed as knowing more than anyone else in his - or indeed any - force about policing in all its complexities and occasional absurdities. His weary doggedness, his vast knowledge of his patch and its people from best to worst, his capacity for observation and analysis, together amount to a towering fictional achievement: so believable that the Oxford bar in Edinburgh's New Town without him - weary and watchful, sitting in his usual corner, nursing a Speyside - must now seem somehow inauthentic.

And for me Ian Rankin's second-greatest creation is his Edinburgh - a city in which I lived for 25 years. He knows it, and it shows: in his books it lives as Rebus lives within it, its odd three-dimensional geography and strange juxtapositions, its ancient heart and uneven suburbs, its pretensions and its disappointments all there, a vast, intricate set ideally matched to the careful working-out of the intricacies of the Rebus stories.

And has Rebus really retired? Before writing this I read again the last page of the last - or possibly last - Rebus story. Was there in it just a touch of the Reichenbach Falls to give us hope?

The 50 Greatest Crime Writers

Our selection of the all-time greats: Post your suggestions in the comments box below

Background

• Ian Rankin on the trouble with lists

• More trouble with lists

Related Internet Links

• Top 50 Crime Writers - Main Page

One to read: Exit Music (2007)

Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, grew up, like Ian Rankin, in Fife. He has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East and then for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. His nonfiction books include Courage, a collection of portraits of inspiring men and women.

Video: Rankin discusses his work in a selection of video clips

Actor Ken Scott on playing Rebus in the ITV series based on Rankin’s novels

Ian Rankin on the joy of crime fiction

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