Inspector Rebus span a broad spectrum of Scotland, including council estates, tenements, business districts, nightclubs, prisons, dying mining towns, secluded villages and desolate hillsides, as well as the better-known pubs and streets of Edinburgh. Some of these locations are fictional, although they may be based on real places. For example, the Pilmuir estate is a conflation of the two real Edinburgh locations Pilton and Muirhouse. Other locations, such as the Oxford Bar, Arden Street, and St Leonards police station, are real. Frequent references to real places, or local politics firmly ground the Rebus series in the real world. Another strong feature of
Ian Rankin 2013, Rankin co-wrote the play "Dark Road" with Mark Thomson, the artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre. The play, which marked Rankin's play-writing debut, premiered at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in September 2013. Rankin is a regular contributor to the BBC Two arts programme "Newsnight Review". His 3-part documentary series on the subject of evil was broadcast on Channel 4 in December 2002. In 2005 he presented a 30-minute documentary on BBC Four called "Rankin on the Staircase", in which he investigated the relationship between real-life cases and crime fiction. It was loosely based on the Michael Peterson murder