Rebus

And what's shocking to me is how lean it is.

The book clocks in at just 128 pages, but within those pages, Rankin introduces Detective Sergeant John Rebus.

Now, Rebus is a guy operating in Edinburgh, and he is a complete departure from the polite intellectual sleuth.

He's heavily haunted by his previous career in the Special Air Service, the SAS.

I wouldn't even call him a departure so much as a total demolition of the sleuth archetype.

Oh, that's a good way to put it.

Look at the mechanics of what Rankin is doing here.

Rebus isn't just solving a crime.

To help us follow that process, we're joined by an author who's lived it many, many times, and the editor who's worked with him along the way.

Sir Ian Rankin is the multimillion-copy worldwide best-selling author of over 30 novels, best known for his Rebus series.

His books have been translated into 36 languages and adapted for radio, the stage, and the screen.

Sir Ian is the recipient of four Crime Writers' Association Dagger awards, including the Diamond Daggers, which is the UK's most prestigious award for crime fiction.

And yeah, so I won the, the Gold Dagger, and Orion went, "Oh, this guy knows what he's doing." So they put a little bit more marketing muscle and promotional money into the next book, uh, which I think was my first ever time of gracing the top 10.

I got to number 10 for one week with The Hanging Garden.

That was Rebus novel number nine.

Number nine.

But anyway, Ian.

Rebus, thank you.

He's written a standalone for the first time in absolutely forever because we talked about it by email, what to do with a Rebus who is just not able physically or probably mentally to do the work that he did.

So his next book will be the last Rebus where he's going to wind that up.

Well, if you don't want to do that, then you do have to figure out a way to let everybody else age but your action hero not.

I feel like Kyle did a really good job with that because you didn't age Mitch per se, but you made him deal with the consequences of growing older.

And I'm not alone.

And in case you think I'm being melodramatic, I invite you to do some research on what Ian Rankin has had to say about giving Rebus a pet dog, Brillo.

Now, spoiler alert.

He half-jokingly has said that he wishes he had never done it because readers have become more focused on the dog's welfare than they are on Rebus solving the crime.

The dog has stolen the show and Rankin's body of work over his career featuring a detective, Rebus, right? He spent 30 years, maybe longer, developing Rebus and that world.

It's almost now playing second fiddle to a stray dog.

Like that's no joke.

Go on YouTube, look up interviews with Ian Rankin and how he talks about Brillo.

Yeah.

Rebus, solving one of them.

Anyway.

[laughing]