Black And Blue

Praise for Ian Rankin

‘No one captures the noirish edge of the city as well as Rankin’

Daily Telegraph

‘As always, Rankin proves himself the master of his own milieu. He brings the dark underside of Edinburgh deliciously to life … Rankin’s skill lies mainly in the confident way he weaves the disparate threads into a cohesive whole’

Daily Mail

‘Rankin has followed one success with another … What is striking is the way Rankin uses his laconic prose as a literary paint stripper, scouring away pretensions to reveal the unwholesome reality beneath’

Independent

‘Ian Rankin is currently the biggest noise in British crime fiction, with sales of his books accounting for just over ten per cent of the UK market. And, for once, the hype and the big sales are backed up with literary talent’

Time Out

‘His fiction buzzes with energy … Essentially, he is a romantic storyteller in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson … His prose is as vivid and and terse as the next man’s yet its flexibility and rhythm give it a potential for lyrical expression which is distinctively Rankin’s own’

Scotland on Sunday

‘Rankin … moves dialogue with the precision of a chess-master’

Irish Times

‘Ian Rankin is widely, and rightly, regarded as the leading male crime writer in Britain’

TLS

‘No other writer in his chosen genre is producing books as rich and comprehensive as this: Dickensian, you might say’

Literary Review

‘Rebus is a masterful creation … Rankin has taken his well-earned place among the top echelon of crimewriters’

Observer

‘It’s the banter and energy, the immense carnival of scenes and characters, voices and moods, that sets Rankin apart. His stories are like a transmission forever in the red zone, at the edge of burnout. This is crime fiction at its best: the narrative stuffed beyond good measure with a world that needs knowing’

Washington Post

Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into over thirty languages and are bestsellers worldwide.

Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005 and in 2009 was inducted into the CWA Hall of Fame. In 2004, Ian won America’s celebrated Edgar award for Resurrection Men. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Awards in the USA, and won Denmark’s Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the Deutscher Krimipreis. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University.

A contributor to BBC2’s Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin’s Evil Thoughts. He has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh. He has also recently been appointed to the rank of Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons. Visit his website at www.ianrankin.net.