Fleshmarket Close Analysis

Character Description: John Rebus
John Rebus is the detective in Ian Rankin’s Fleshmarket Close who also features as the protagonist inspector in fourteen other novels that Ian Rankin has wrote. John Rebus was born in 1947 and grew up in a terraced house with his brother Michael. Rebus dropped out of high school at the age of fifteen to enroll in the army seeing as how the only other option was coal mining. After fighting for Northern Ireland he was selected for the Special Air Service. When Rebus started to undergo his training there was a traumatizing accident that caused him to turn down the offer and instead joined the Lothian and boarders police. Around the time of the 1980’s Rebus was married but soon divorced by his ex-wife Rohna but in that time they were together the couple had a daughter named Samantha. Over his years as a detective he has been promoted once and has been offered and turned down other promotions. There isn’t much physical description of the investigator except for the fact he has brown hair and green eyes like his brother Michael.

Clues:
At the beginning of Fleshmarket Close inspector Rebus is informed of a man from Kosovo that was killed in an Edinburgh slum. The killing seems to be an act of racism but Rebus believes otherwise. The first clue that brings the inspector closer is when a detention centre makes an attempt to keep asylum seekers on track. They do this by burying a mother and a baby skeleton from a research project under concrete at a bar to convince the seekers that the ones that were buried were out of line. The bar owner was in on the whole thing though so he uncovers the skeletons to create publicity for his bar. Rebus finds this suspicious and investigates this particular part of Edinburgh’s Ghost Tours. At the same time another case on a girl that has gone missing is being investigated. A man who was just released out of jail murdered that girl’s sister and that man got murdered as well. Later two murders take place on a house estate, which brings a local journalist to the scene and gets him self killed. In the end it turns out that the illegal immigrants were staying at the house estate. The team of detectives, Rebus, and someone from the immigration service put all the evidence and facts together and solving all the crimes

Quotes:
One of my three quotes that appeal to my interests is “more than one flesh market” this helped me create in my mind another possibility as to a clue that would lead Rebus closer to his answers. My second quote is “so what was the tip-off” “Just Ballen’s dirty people smuggling” I found this very interesting because if this tip hadn’t have happened Rebus wouldn’t have found out who was bringing in the immigrants. My final quote is “Im a big girl… a big girl afraid of waging tongues” I find this to be quite interesting because waging tongues isn’t something to be afraid of if you are a “big girl” you should be able to engage in a series of conversations and she pretty much contradicted herself.