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. In 2003 Rankin sold over one million books. He now makes up more than 10 per cent of all UK crime sales. Rankin also constantly gets excellent reviews: 'THE FALLS is an inventive and absorbing book ... Once again the city, cast in shadows and light, is centre stage, as complex and brooding as Rebus himself ... Ian Rankin, a crime writer with style, has produced another highly enjoyable and exciting book' The Scotsman. 'First rate crime fiction with a fierce realism' Sunday Telegraph. 'Rankin is streets ahead in the British police procedural writing field ... our top crime writer' Independent on Sunday. 'As sharp as a switchblade. This is, quite simply, crime writing of the highest order' Express.

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.