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,
Knots and Crosses for a while that Rebus himself is unwittingly the killer) and he put Rebus in the same road, Arden Street, that he himself was living in. He states he was shocked to find out later that everyone thought he'd written a crime book, as he was unfamiliar with the genre. Knots and Crosses Knots and Crosses is a 1987 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the first of the Inspector Rebus novels. It was written while Rankin was a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh. In the introduction to this novel, Rankin states that Rebus lives directly opposite