Inspector Rebus Books in Order

Now in Edinburgh prison after the events of A Heart Full of Headstones, Rebus becomes entangled in the death of a fellow inmate found in a locked cell. As investigators circle him, he has to navigate prison factions and decide who, if anyone, he can trust.

Rebus faces trial for a serious crime, even as flashbacks show him, Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox probing abuse and corruption around Edinburgh’s Tynecastle station. Old deals with Big Ger Cafferty and a new crime family force Rebus to reckon with what kind of cop he has been.

Rebus drives to a remote northern village when his daughter Samantha reports her partner missing near a former wartime camp. While local police eye her as their prime suspect, Clarke and Fox chase the murder of a Saudi student in Edinburgh that may connect back north.

Written for the stage, this story finds an aging Rebus drawn into a decades old murder when the victim’s daughter appears at his door. Teaming up with Siobhan Clarke and circling Cafferty once more, he tests how far loyalty can stretch after retirement.

When a long missing private investigator is found dead in a rusted car, his ankles chained with police issue cuffs, old failures come back to haunt the force. Rebus, now retired and ill, works alongside Clarke and Fox to untangle buried corruption.

Kept awake by memories and health worries, Rebus starts digging into the unsolved 1970s murder of a woman in an Edinburgh hotel. The cold case collides with Siobhan Clarke’s inquiry into an attack on young crime boss Darryl Christie, pulling in Malcolm Fox and Cafferty.

Threatening notes and a shooting pull semi retired gangster Cafferty back into danger, while Siobhan Clarke investigates a murdered prosecutor and Malcolm Fox shadows a Glaswegian crime family. Rebus is dragged out of retirement to uncover a decades old betrayal behind the new violence.

This collection gathers every John Rebus short story in one volume, following him from early days on the force to uneasy retirement. The pieces fill in gaps between the novels and spotlight Edinburgh’s alleys, pubs and lost souls in bite sized investigations.

In this short, high pressure case, a weary officer finds that a routine inquiry is hiding a much darker crime. As the clock runs down, split second choices decide who walks away and who does not.

Reinstated as a detective sergeant, Rebus helps Malcolm Fox reopen an old murder tied to the Summerhall station where he once served. As Police Scotland is created and loyalties shift, he must decide how much of his own past he is willing to expose.

Officially retired, Rebus works cold cases when a woman begs him to look into her daughter’s disappearance years earlier. He spots a pattern of missing women along the A9, drawing him back into CID, up to the Highlands and into conflict with Malcolm Fox.

In his final days before mandatory retirement, Rebus investigates the beating death of a Russian dissident poet and a linked house fire. The trail winds through Scottish politics, oligarch money and Cafferty’s shifting power, while Siobhan Clarke prepares to face the job without her mentor.

With the G8 summit and mass protests roiling Scotland, Rebus attends his brother’s funeral then drifts to the margins of a politically sensitive case. Siobhan Clarke leads on a dead MP and a vigilante website naming offenders, while both detectives reckon with family ties.

Pushed toward retirement and deprived of a desk, Rebus roams cases involving a murdered asylum seeker, two skeletons under a cellar floor and a brutalised Kurdish journalist. The investigation exposes tensions around immigration, detention centres and those who profit from the vulnerable.

Suspended and nursing badly burned hands, Rebus looks into a school shooting in which an ex soldier apparently killed two boys and himself. The closer he gets to the gun’s true origin, the more the case brushes politics, intelligence agencies and his own family.

Twelve Rebus short stories trace a year in Edinburgh, from Festival crowds to bleak New Year streets. Each compact case highlights a different facet of Rebus and the city, from petty scams to murder, and rewards fans looking for smaller, sharper mysteries.

After throwing a mug at a superior, Rebus is packed off to a residential retraining course with other troublesome detectives. Secretly, he is there to root out an old corruption scandal, even as Siobhan Clarke investigates an art dealer’s murder back in Edinburgh.

When a banker’s postgraduate daughter disappears near Edinburgh, a huge investigation swings into motion. Rebus and Siobhan Clarke chase an online role playing game, eerie miniature coffins and family pressure to uncover what really happened to a young woman who slipped through the cracks.

As Scotland prepares to reopen its Parliament, Rebus juggles three deaths a long hidden corpse in an old fireplace, a homeless man with a suitcase of cash and a murdered rising politician. Property deals, old secrets and Big Ger Cafferty link them all.

Rebus publicly outs a registered sex offender he spots at the zoo, only to watch the man end up dead. At the same time a notorious killer returns from an American prison, forcing Rebus to confront his own prejudices about redemption.

Rebus is stretched thin by overlapping cases, from a suspected Nazi war criminal living quietly in Edinburgh to gang warfare over drugs and trafficking. When his daughter is badly injured in a hit and run, he blurs every line to strike back.

Asked to find a missing young man who vanished after a night in a Fife nightclub, Rebus is forced to revisit an old relationship and the choices he never made. A compact case becomes a meditation on loyalty, aging and regret.

Juggling four cases at once, Rebus chases a killer copycatting the unsolved Bible John murders while under internal investigation himself. From Glasgow oil rigs to Shetland, he confronts past mistakes and the price of bending rules in pursuit of the truth.

After a disastrous car chase ends with two young men jumping from the Forth Road Bridge, Rebus cannot accept the official line. His search links a dying prisoner, missing money and a powerful clique in government that would prefer silence.

During the Edinburgh Festival a brutally executed body is found in a hidden close, marked with extremist tattoos. Rebus is drawn into a murky alliance between Scottish nationalist hardliners and Northern Irish paramilitaries, with Cafferty hovering at the edges.

When a colleague is beaten into a coma, Rebus follows clues in the officer's notebook to an unsolved fire at a seedy hotel. The trail winds through an Elvis themed diner and gangster Big Ger Cafferty’s empire toward a buried body.

Sent to London to assist in catching the Wolfman, a serial killer who bites his victims, Rebus clashes with local detectives and a seductive profiler. Far from home, he struggles with family worries while chasing a ruthless predator.

A late night brothel raid exposes rising MP Gregor Jack, triggering scandal and his wife's disappearance. Rebus senses a setup and digs into the couple's privileged circle, where loyalty, blackmail and old grudges turn deadly.

Twelve Edinburgh based Rebus stories follow the detective through a year of cases, from tourist packed festivals to bleak winter streets. Each short mystery shows a different corner of the city and the compromises Rebus makes to deliver justice.

Rebus finds a drug addict posed like a ritual sacrifice in a grim Edinburgh squat. When the trail leads to a secretive club where powerful men watch illegal fights, he uncovers a conspiracy others in the force would rather ignore.

Detective Sergeant John Rebus hunts a killer abducting schoolgirls in Edinburgh while anonymous notes dredge up his buried SAS past. As the case turns personal, he must face his own history to stop a predator stalking the city.