History Literature / Rebus

* LateArrivalSpoiler: As stated above, the notion that Rebus may be the killer in ''Knots and Crosses''

* AlwaysMurder: Somewhat [[JustifiedTrope justified]]. Rebus deals mostly with murders (well, a few cases start off as missing persons...) but as a senior detective, that is pretty much what his workload would be. However the short stories have him dealing with more mundane crimes, mainly theft.

** Was Joseph Lintz, an elderly academic who Rebus encounters (and who is later murdered) in ''The Hanging Garden'', a Nazi war criminal in his younger days? The circumstantial evidence says that he may well have been, but we don't know for sure. His murder [[spoiler: is eventually found to have been a somewhat extreme case of assisted suicide, although whether he chose this course of action due to guilt for his crimes, or he was DrivenToSuicide after being accused of said crimes is, left unstated]].
** ''Exit Music'' ends with [[spoiler: Cafferty in a coma, with his heart flatlining while Rebus tries to revive him. We are not told if he survives. It's only with his reappearance in ''Standing in Another Man's Grave (published five years later) that we learn that he did]].

* AmbiguousSituation: A few.
** Rebus's earlier sidekick Brian Holmes is subject to a brutal attack which leaves him in a coma; after he recovers, he decides to leave the police. Rebus suspects that the attack was orchestrated by Holmes's fiancee (who wanted him to leave the police), but he cannot prove this.
** Was Joseph Lintz, an elderly academic who Rebus encounters in ''The Hanging Garden'', a Nazi war criminal in his younger days? The circumstantial evidence say that he may well have been, but we don't know for sure.
** ''Exit Music'' ends with Cafferty in a coma, with his heart flatlining while Rebus tries to revive him. It's only with his reappearance in ''Standing in Another Man's Grave (published five years later) that we learn that he survived.
* AssholeVictim: Quite a few murder victims are not exactly sympathetic characters — among those who get bumped off are pimps, paedophiles and in one case, a serial killer.

** Rebus's earlier sidekick Brian Holmes is subject to a brutal attack which leaves him in a coma; after he recovers, he decides to leave the police. Rebus suspects that the attack was orchestrated by Holmes's fiancee, but he cannot prove this.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: An interesting example occurs in ''Black and Blue'' — an ''unidentified serial killer'' is a minor character. The killer in question is the man known as Bible John, who murdered three women in Glasgow in the late 1960s and was never caught. In the novel, which is set in the then-present (ie. the mid-1990s), Edinburgh is rocked by a series of [[JackTheRipoff copycat killings]], and the original Bible John killer (identified to the reader via a series of internal monologues) is not happy about having an imitator. [[spoiler: Rebus eventually works out that the character in question is Bible John, but by the time he has done so, the man has vanished. And murdered his imitator. Given that this is never mentioned in later novels, it must be assumed that Rebus never caught him.]]

** As well as being named after a Music/RollingStones album ''Black and Blue'' is an example of this as it alludes to bruising as well as the fact that those colours are (respectively) synonymous with oil (a key plot element as Rebus's investigation in this novel touches on the North Sea oil industry) and the police.

** ''Hide and Seek'' is about Rebus hunting a killer and the last thing the victim said was "Hide!" The title also reflects the fact Rankin wrote the novel as a SettingUpdate of ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde''.
** As well as being named after a Music/RollingStones album

* DrowningMySorrows: ''Tooth and Nail'' begins with Rebus on a train to London. Opposite him is an Englishman who went up to Edinburgh for a [[UsefulNotes/RugbyUnion rugby]] match between Scotland and England; Scotland won, and the Englishman is consoling himself with many beers on the journey home.

* DoubleMeaningTitle: ''Hide and Seek'' is about Rebus hunting a killer and the last thing the victim said was "Hide!" The title also reflects the fact Rankin wrote the novel as a SettingUpdate of ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde''.
** There is also the main character's name- a "rebus" is a picture that is also a puzzle.

** On a lighter note, the roadworks on Edinburgh's Leith Road have been going on for so long that ''even the characters in the Rebus books'' are complaining about them.

** Was Joseph Lintz, an elderly academic who Rebus encounters in ''The Hanging Garden'', a Nazi war criminal in his younger days?

* AmbiguousSituation: Was Joseph Lintz, an elderly academic who Rebus encounters in ''The Hanging Garden'', a Nazi war criminal in his younger days?

** On a lighter note, the roadworks on Edinburgh's Lothian Road have been going on for so long that ''even the characters in the Rebus books'' are complaining about them.

* BadToTheLastDrop: DCS Watson has a reputation for serving up very bad coffee to anyone who goes into his office. When Gill Templar comments that his coffee has got better of late, Rebus quips that her tastebuds must be getting corroded.

* CreatorProvincialism: Like his creator, Rebus is originally from Fife. He sometimes visits there during the course of his investigations. At one point, a young witness to an incident says that one of the perpetrators was wearing a Dunfermline Athletic shirt; it takes Rebus a while to figure out that said perp was actually wearing a Newcastle United shirt, leading him to reflect only someone from Fife would see someone in a black and white striped football shirt and automatically assume that they were a Pars fan.

* TheMole: Rebus himself in ''Resurrection Men'', in which he gets assigned to a 'retraining' (ie. remedial) unit at the Scottish Police College consisting of undisciplined officers. Although it sounds like the sort of unit a CowboyCop like Rebus would fit into, he's actually working directly for the Chief Constable to investigate criminality on behalf of one or more of the other officers assigned to the unit (who are called the [[TitleDrop Resuurection Men]] because it is hoped that the retraining will serve to resurrect their careers, at least for long enough to enable them to retire with full pensions.

* CreatorProvincialism: Like his creator, Rebus is originally from Fife. He sometimes visits there during the course of his investigations. At one point, a young witness to an incident says that one of the perpetrators was wearing a Dunfermline Athletic shirt; it takes Rebus a while to figure out that said perp was actually wearing a Newcastle United shirt, leading him to reflect only someone from Fife would see someone in a black and white striped football shirt and assume that they were a Pars fan.

* NosyNeighbor: As Rebus points out in 'The Hanging Garden'': "Edinburgh neighbours know ''everything''. It's just that they most often keep it to themselves".

* PerspectiveFlip: ''Doors Open'', written after Rebus was retired first time around, is told from the perspective of a group of would-be criminals (art thieves, specifically) rather than the police. Although Rebus himself is not mentioned by name, he is referred to when a CID cop recalls a recent retirement party that he attended, the clear implication being that it was Rebus's one (which those who had already read ''Exit Music'' will know got rather messy).

* PerspectiveFlip: ''Doors Open'', written after Rebus was retired first time around, is told from the perspective of a group of would-be criminals (art thieves, specifically) rather than the police. Although Rebus himself is not mentioned by name, he is referred to when a CID cop recalls a recent retirement party that he attended.

* TheMole: Rebus himself in ''Resurrection Men'', in which he gets assigned to a 'retraining' (ie. remedial) unit consisting of undisciplined officers. Although it sounds like the sort of unit a CowboyCop like Rebus would fit into, he's actually working directly for the Chief Constable to investigate criminality on behalf of one or more if the other officers assigned to the unit (who are called the [[TitleDrop Resuurection Men]] because it is hoped that the retraining will serve to resurrect their careers, at least for long enough to enable them to retire with full pensions.