Ian Rankin's Edinburgh: Rebus, Malcolm Fox, and the Crossover Cases

Ian Rankin spent thirty years building one of crime fiction’s great characters: Detective Inspector John Rebus, the hard-drinking, rule-breaking Edinburgh detective who never quite fits the system he serves. Then, just as Rebus was being forced to retire, Rankin created Malcolm Fox — a complaints investigator, Rebus’s procedural opposite — and the two characters began to orbit each other.

Here’s how to read both series.

The Inspector Rebus Series

The Inspector Rebus series spans 24 novels (so far) published between 1987 and 2024. It follows Rebus through his career on Edinburgh’s CID, tracking serial cases, Scottish politics, and the criminal underworld of the city Rankin has made his own.

The series has a loose chronological structure: each book takes place roughly in its publication year, which means Rebus ages in real time. By the later books he’s a retired man who keeps being pulled back in — against the rules, against his own best interests, and always effectively.

Start with Knots and Crosses (Book 1, 1987) — it’s a short, sharp novel that establishes Rebus and Edinburgh simultaneously.

Can You Read Them Out of Order?

Each Rebus novel is a standalone mystery. But the character arc — his relationships, his history, his deteriorating health — accumulates across the series. Books like Black and Blue (Book 6), Dead Souls (Book 9), and A Question of Blood (Book 14) work better with the series context behind them.

Black and Blue (1997) is widely considered the best Rebus novel and a natural entry point for new readers who want to start in the middle. Just know you’re missing backstory.

Malcolm Fox

Malcolm Fox is introduced in The Complaints (2009), a standalone novel before he becomes a recurring character. Fox works for the Professional Standards Unit — internally investigating other police officers. He’s precise, sober (explicitly so; Fox is in recovery), and procedurally correct in every way Rebus isn’t.

Fox works as a natural counterpoint to Rebus: where Rebus bends rules and acts on instinct, Fox applies process and distrusts his own instincts.

The Crossover Point

Rebus and Fox first appear in the same novel in Saints of the Shadow Bible (Rebus #18, 2013). From there, their relationship becomes central to the series — Fox increasingly appears in Rebus novels, and the dynamic between them (suspicious, combative, eventually something like mutual respect) drives the later books.

Recommended Reading Order

For the complete experience:

1. Read Rebus Books 1–17 (Knots and Crosses through The Impossible Dead)
2. Read The Complaints (Fox #1) before Saints of the Shadow Bible
3. Continue with Rebus Books 18 onwards, which increasingly feature Fox

If you want to shortcut: start with Knots and Crosses, read through to Black and Blue, then jump to The Complaints before continuing with Saints of the Shadow Bible.

Edinburgh as Character

Rankin’s Edinburgh is as much a character as Rebus. The city shifts across the 30+ years of the series — Leith’s gentrification, the Scottish Parliament’s establishment, the changes in the heroin trade, Brexit’s effects on Scotland. Reading the Rebus novels in order is also reading an unofficial history of Edinburgh from the Thatcher years to the present.

That specificity of place — the pubs, the postcodes, the institutional Edinburgh, the criminal Edinburgh — is what separates the series from the many procedurals set in anonymous cities.