Who is John Rebus, the hero of Ian Rankin’s detective novels?

This weekend marks the premiere of brand new Scottish crime drama Rebus.

Based on the books by Ian Rankin, the show reimagines John Rebus as a younger detective inspector. Still on the beat in Edinburgh, he is drawn into a violent conflict that rapidly becomes personal.

So far, so good – but the character’s backstory is a complicated one. Over the course of 29 books, as well as solving crimes, he ages and reveals increasingly more about his personal life. Who is he really? We take a deep dive into John Rebus.

The start

The first Inspector Rebus novel was published in 1987. Titled Knots and Crosses, it was originally intended to be a standalone book.

This is what it tells us about the protagonist: originally hailing from Fife (where his brother Michael lives, and works as a stage hypnotist), he left school to join the army, and served in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles.

He then signed up for the SAS, but after a nervous breakdown, left in order to become a police detective – though he still suffers from PTSD during the first four novels.

We’re also introduced to his family – or at least, his estranged family. John is divorced from Rhona, and his daughter, Samantha, is nearly 12.

Aging in real time

As Rankin expanded his series of novels, he decided that Rebus would age in real time alongside the books. In the first book, Samantha is 12; in 1992’s Tooth and Nail, she is 16.

This had its limits: in 2000, Rankin realised that the detective was approaching his retirement point and heading for his seventies. Though Rebus ‘officially’ retired in 2007, he hasn’t aged much since then. Instead, he imagines him as staying in his late sixties as of 2020, still more than capable of solving crimes.

Personality

Rebus’ character has changed over the years as he has aged, but some of those personality traits have stayed the same.

Writing for the London Review of Books in 2000, John Lanchester said that “stubbornness is Rebus's most deep-seated characteristic. All the various ways in which he could improve the quality of his life – which boil down essentially to his being less impossible – are somehow unthinkable.

“He stands in everybody else's way, but he stands in his own way too: difficult, determined, remorseless, honourable, honest, and proud of his lack of charm. He is a deeply Scottish self-image…”

Is he likeable? Not really. In the books, he’s shown as a man of action. He makes jokes at the expense of his friends, he drinks and smokes (though he cuts back on this later in life), and lies to potential witnesses, promising them secrecy before divulging their secrets to others.

There’s also a lot of back and forth in the books between Rebus and the gangster Ger Cafferty, whom he treats as a source of information and influence amongst the criminal underworld – despite also trying to collect evidence of Cafferty’s crimes with which to nail him.

However, Rebus is also an excellent detective: he pursues every avenue in search of the truth, to a degree others often consider to be obsessive. Never discreet or politically sensitive, he gets suspended from his work at least eight times for his maverick behaviour.

How does the show differ?

Though most plot details are being kept tightly under wraps, Rankin himself has spoken about the upcoming changes to Rankin’s character and storyline.

“In the new incarnation, there's a fascinating focus on Rebus and his brother,” he said ahead of the show landing. “There have been characters and situations in the books where I felt that in retrospect I didn't do enough with them.” The two’s fractious relationship – they start the series hardly speaking to each other – will be explored in more detail here.

Another striking element is the fact that Rebus – who is much older in Rankin’s most recent novels, set in the present day – has been drastically de-aged.

“I think long term fans will get a shock because they're seeing young Rebus. Richard Rankin is not in his 70s or his 60s or his 50s, so they're getting the quite macho Rebus from the early books, but set in contemporary times,” he says. “We get the strength of Rebus as a quite a gung-ho cop, but set against contemporary issues, contemporary politics and contemporary problems that people have.”

Rankin will air on BBC One and iPlayer from May 18