Ian Rankin
International Literary Patron
Ian Rankin is the UK's number one best-selling crime writer. He lives in Edinburgh, and
writes about the city in his award-winning 'Inspector Rebus' novels.
Ken Stott stars as DI Rebus in the television adaptation of the books, currently screening
on ABC-TV. The Rebus novels have been translated into 26 languages.
Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of
Edinburgh and has since been employed as grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol
researcher, hi-fi journalist and punk musician. He was a prize-winning poet and short-story
writer before turning to novels with The Flood, followed by Knots & Crosses, the first of his
powerful Inspector Rebus novels, in 1987.
Ian Rankin is a past winner of the prestigious Chandler-Fulbright Award, one of the world’s
most prestigious detective fiction prizes, funded by the estate of Raymond Chandler. In
1997 Ian won the Crime Writers’ Association The Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction for
Black & Blue, which was also short listed for the Mystery Writers of America ‘Edgar’ award
for best novel. He won the Edgar Award in 2004 for Resurrection Men. He won the CWA
Short Story Dagger Award in 1994 for his tale ‘A Deep Hole’, and again in 1996 for
‘Herbert in Motion’. Dead Souls, the tenth novel in the Rebus series, was short listed for
the CWA Gold Dagger in 1999.
Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow by the International Retreat for Writers
at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland.
He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Abertay, Dundee
and was elected Alumnus of the Year of Edinburgh University. Ian Rankin is married with
two sons. Ian Rankin was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Birthday
Honours List in June 2002.
Crime & Justice is proud to have Ian Rankin as its International Patron.
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