The Inspector Rebus books are a series of detective novels by the Scottish author Sir Ian Rankin. The novels, centred on Detective Inspector John Rebus, are mostly based in and around Edinburgh. They are considered an important contribution to 'Tartan Noir'. Overview Genre and Literary Influences The Rebus novel series began in 1987 when Ian Rankin published Knots and Crosses; his intention was to write a standalone variation on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, set in contemporary Edinburgh. He was at first upset that bookstores shelved it in the crime fiction section, but he gradually accepted the fact that Rebus was to be the protagonist of a detective series: his goal became to write "on the surface a crime novel that was going to sell loads of copies, but which would be accepted by my peers in academia as serious Scottish fiction." From 1991 through 2007, in fact, Rankin produced a new Rebus novel every year, and there have been seven "late" novels from 2012-22, with a retired Rebus. The 1997 book, Black & Blue, which linked Rebus's case with the unsolved Bible John murders, achieved the double goal of sales and prestige. First, it was a best-seller and the backlist of Rebus novels came into high demand. Second, it won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, but also came into consideration on more general lists of the best Scottish novels or writers, and was discussed in the British press as a novel which trangressed the boundaries of genre. The very fact that in 2002 a book on Black & Blue was commissioned for the Continuum Contemporaries Series, alongside authors such as A.S. Byatt, Arundhati Roy, and Nobellists Kazuo Ishiguro and Toni Morrison, makes it clear that Rankin had become a "serious" author on the international stage. Rebus himself has continued to wrestle with his own "Hyde" aspects, particularly when confronted with old cases where his recklessness may have led to injustice or death. Other characters have borne out this theme of the dual self, for example the Wolfman serial killer in Tooth and Nail and the former Nazi Lintz in The Hanging Garden. Most importantly, Rebus has faced off since The Black Book (1992) with 'Big Ger' Cafferty, a vicious gangster about his own age. Rankin compares the relationship between Rebus and Cafferty to that of Wringhim and Gilmartin (the devil