The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories: From the iconic #1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES

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A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons. If you have not read any Rebus or Rankin before, this may be a good starting point, just to work out whether you enjoy his storytelling prowess, or just to see if you think Rebus will be worth your time. I can't imagine why he wouldn't be, but, you know, just in case. The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Short Stories is an anthology of all the Inspector Rebus short stories (30) by Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin, plus the novella Death Is Not the End; though the Rebus short story "Well Shot" published in 2nd Culprit (1993) is not included. It is Rankin's third collection of short stories There is no detective like DI Rebus – brilliant, irascible and endlessly frustrating both to his friends and his long-suffering bosses. For over two decades he has walked through the dark places of Edinburgh . . .

Richard Prather (I think) once said that every short story featuring a series character should make the reader want to buy the novels. In this, the book was a failure for me, as I'm not moved to go buy a novel.Each story is just a small, non-significant mystery that Rebus has to solve, some of which featured as side-plots in one of the fully-formed Rebus novels. With these stories you gain an insight in to John Rebus himself, the people he works with and against, Edinburgh and of Rankin's writing style as it is. The first book gifted to me in my Advent Book Calendar. I’m not quite sure how they work - as I to read a book per day in December? That would have been possible for me before my many commitments. But not any more. Not to mention my intolerable chronic pain that keeps tapping me on the shoulder. Brilliant, irascible and frequently frustrating to both his friends and his long-suffering bosses, John Rebus has made the dark places of Edinburgh his home for over two decades. The Beat Goes On collects all of Ian Rankin's Rebus short stories for the first time, including two never-before published tales written specifically for this collection. A collection of short stories, many involving Inspector Rebus, but others as well. The Rebus stories are interesting as there are no big involved cases, but just Rebus out and about doing the day-to-day policing in Edinburgh. Even though this is a great big fat doorstopper of a book -- in fact, probably exactly because this is a great big fat doorstopper of a book! -- my notes on it are going to be briefer than they might be.

Last year, after one of his friends died unexpectedly at a young age, Ian Rankin announced that he'd be taking a year or two off from novel writing to have a bit of a rest. I assume this collection of short stories has been issued to fill the void that many of us Rebus fans would have felt without a new book for the winter. And, since I haven't read any of these before, it filled that void very satisfactorily. The Gentleman's club was my favorite story. A twisted tale of suicide and pedophilia and teenage jealousy making room for an incredible mystery, with an afterthought:There is no detective like DI Rebus. Brilliant, irascible and endlessly frustrating to both his friends and his long-suffering bosses, he has made the dark places of Edinburgh his comfort and his home for over two decades. From his beginnings as a young Detective Constable in 'Dead and Buried', right up to his dramatic - but as it turns out, not quite final - retirement in 'The Very Last Drop', we see one of the most compelling, brilliant and mesmeric characters of modern times in his every guise and very much in his element.