Ian Rankin

 Ian Rankin is one of the best crime writers in Great Britain. He sells the best and most in UK. He lives in Edinburg where the most famous character in his novels, John Rebus, lives most of his ` mysterious cases ?. `Inspector Rebus ? novels have won him many awards in literature and have even been dramatized for television.

Rankin was born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960. He graduated from the University of Edinburg and was employed in many different jobs before he started to write seriously and was recognized as such for doing so. He worked as a grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist and punk musician. This interest for music can be seen in his novels in the numerous references to bands of rock music that are used to describe the moments of anguish, mental block or relief as crimes are investigated.

Before being successful with his powerful Inspector Rebus, he won different awards in poetry and as a short story writer. The first novel featuring Inspector Rebus was `Knots And Crosses  ?in 1987. He has won many awards, among many of them the Crime Writers' Association Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction for Black & Blue (1997), the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel for Resurrection Men (2004) – which also won the Deutsche Krimi Prize, Germany’s most prestigious award for crime fiction – and he has twice won the Crime Writers' Association Macallan Short Story Dagger Award (1994 and 1996). In 2005 he was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year for Fleshmarket Close (2004) and the most prestigious award for crime fiction in France, the Grand Prix du Roman Policier, for Set in Darkness (2000). In 2007 he, again, was awarded the British Book Awards, winning the Crime Thriller of the Year for The Naming of the Dead (2006).

Ian Rankin is especially very well considered in Scotland for his contribution to the cultural and social landscape of Edinburg, a city very well depicted in his books of Inspector Rebus. Many city guides of this city make constant references to those places ,pubs, neighborhoods, …where the famous detective wanders in the solving of his puzzling cases.