Ian Rankin was born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960 and graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982.

bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES - 'unmatched in the field of British crime fiction' THE TIMES. Sometimes, all you need is a quick read that will distract you and keep you entertained for a short while, and The Rise, by Ian Rankin, really hit the spot.Many thanks to both Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an early copy of A Heart Full of Headstones. Favourite reads of the year included Don Paterson’s Toy Fights, Nick Cave’s Faith, Hope and Carnage, Joanne Harris’s Broken Light, John Niven’s O Brother, Michael J Malone’s The Murmurs, Julie Hamill’s Frank, S. When I wasn’t busy writing, I managed to see some pretty good gigs – Midlake, Van der Graf Generator and Nick Mason stand out in my memory – and spent my birthday at the end of April in Istanbul. Talk to a member of staff at the auditorium entrance if you have a disability that means you can’t queue, or you need extra time to take your seat.

An unsparing yet sympathetic depiction of Edinburgh’s ignored underclass, with terrific characterisation. I listened to this novel on audio, ably narrated by James MacPherson, at 11 hours and 43 minutes long, which I recommend. Then she hands it over, I go away, read over her notes, then we sit and talk over what I need to do and why I need to do it.This allows Rebus to drift through crime scenes not connected to his own quest, and revisit some of his old connections at the disreputable Tynecastle police station. Rebus never served there, but was aware of that culture and connected to it through his ‘association’ with crime figure, “Big Ger” Cafferty – confined to a wheelchair after an unsuccessful assassination attempt. This novel is full of ancillary characters, and stories that seem tangential, for the bulk of the book. He’s riding shotgun on the Tynecastle situation, the top brass being keen that the nefarious acts of the past don’t see the light of day. It’s a complex but highly entertaining novel, how could it be anything else if John Rebus is involved.

This is the 24th Rebus novel by Ian Rankin and, like previous books in the series, it is well-written, well-plotted and smart with plenty of twists and turns.Albums of the year would include Lankum’s False Lankum, Cloth’s Secret Measure, Lloyd Cole’s On Pain, Dot Allison’s Consciousology, The Coral’s Sea of Mirrors, Teenage Fanclub’s Nothing Lasts Forever, The Bathers’ Sirenesque, King Creosote’s I Des, and Makushin’s Move Into the Luminous. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images View image in fullscreen One Hyde Park … a luxury high-rise development overlooking Hyde Park in London becomes the focus of a murder inquiry in The Rise. Despite this being his sabbatical year, in which the plan was he would take time off writing and travel with his wife, he was committed to writing a novella, and intrigued by the chance to do something new.

A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin was published in October 2022 and is set in Edinburgh, during the Covid pandemic. It seems, though, that there are only a half dozen people who live in the building, including the owner who lives in the penthouse.It has the classic Rebus touches – the plodding and exhaustive police investigation, the back alleyways those investigations can discover, and something of a surprise ending. Obstructed continually by locked doors, governments both foreign and domestic, and an apparent absence of motive, can DS Gish solve this impenetrable mystery and apprehend the murderer—before they slip away forever? Characters from former books show up and if you haven't read several of the books in this series, you will be confused.