Includes a brand new introduction by the author. Reissued in the stunning new livery. All the backlist are being reissued in the new look. Ian Rankin is a regular Sunday Times bestseller and Guardian fastseller. He has an incredibly high profile - in 2003, he had his own TV series (Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts), received his OBE, guested on Newsnight Review and is a constant contributor to the national press. He has won numerous awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger and the Edgar Award. Ian Rankin makes up more than 10 per cent of all UK crime sales. He also constantly gets excellent reviews: 'Arguably Scotland's finest living writer' The Times. 'They call his work crime fiction, but the adjective is superfluous ... these novels are totally absorbing. Once I start reading one, all else goes by the board till I have finished it' Spectator. 'Ian Rankin is widely, and rightly, regarded as the leading male crime writer in Britain' TLS. 'It bears all the qualities that have established Rankin as one of Britain's leading novelists in any genre' New Statesman. 'This is Rankin at his best, and, boy, that's saying something' Time Out.

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 was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into twenty-two languages and are bestsellers on several continents. 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. In 2004, Ian won America's celebrated Edgar Award for 'Resurrection Men'. He has also been shortlisted for the Edgar and 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 and Edinburgh. A contributor to BBC2's 'Newsnight Review', he also presented his own TV series, 'Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts'. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.