Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seedy Central Hotel to ashes. Long-forgotten and unsolved, the case reappears when a charred body--with a bullet in its head--is found among the ruins. Inspector John Rebus knows that his superiors would prefer he leave things alone. He knows that part of the answer lies somewhere in a cryptic black notebook. And he knows that to solve the case, he'll have to peel back layer after layer of unspeakable...

Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh police hunts for a World War II criminal, a Nazi officer who massacred an entire village in France. At the same time he has to bust a ring which is importing East European prostitutes.

Edinburgh detective John Rebus gets involved with the case of a missing young woman. His only clues are an Internet-based role-playing game and a wooden doll stuffed into a tiny casket.

"In Edinburgh you're never far from a peaceful spot, or from a hellish one either. Now, in the heart of summer, in the midst of a nationalist festival, Inspector John Rebus is on the murder case of a young man left hanging in a spot where his screams would never be heart. To find the victim's identity--and his killer--Rebus searches from Edinburgh's most violent neighborhood to Belfast, Northern Ireland, among petty thugs, gunrunners, and heavyweight...

Two Scottish detectives investigate the disappearance of a hitchhiking teenage girl, their only clue a photo sent from the missing girl's cell phone. Rebus has never shied away from lost causes, one of the many ways he managed to antagonize his bosses when he was on the force. Now he's back as a retired civilian, reviewing abandoned files. Necessary work, but it's not exactly scratching the itch he feels to be in the heart of the action. He's investigating...

"Brilliant, irascible and frequently frustrating to both his friends and his long-suffering bosses, John Rebus has made the dark places of Edinburgh his home for over two decades. THE BEAT GOES ON collects all of Ian Rankin's Rebus short stories for the first time, including two never-before published tales written specifically for this collection. From his beginnings as a young Detective Constable in "Dead and Buried," right up to his dramatic, but...