The Oxford Bar of police officers drink there. In "Dirty Work: Ian Rankin and John Rebus Book-By-Book", Ray Dexter and Nadine Carr note that the Oxford Bar would be an improbable local for Rebus due to its geographical location. Other visitors to the bar have included actor Sean Connery and author Colin Dexter. Quintin Jardine's 2009 Bob Skinner novel, "Fatal Last Words", also mentions the Oxford Bar considerably, again due to the connection with the local police force drinking there. There are a few other nods to Rankin too. The Oxford Bar The Oxford Bar is a public house situated on Young Street,
John Rebus therefore, be 70 in 2017; but, in Rankin's mind, Rebus is still in his mid-60s. Plans were afoot in the late 1980s and early '90s to bring Rebus to television in an adaptation of "Knots and Crosses" with Leslie Grantham in the lead but this came to nothing. Ian Rankin believes that it was likely they would have made Rebus English or relocated the entire story to London. Rankin has revealed the BBC were also keen to cast Robbie Coltrane as Rebus in a mooted adaptation of the series in the 1990s. Rankin "smiled a bit", imagining flashbacks to Rebus's