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 with BBC Radio Scotland, Rankin corrected his interviewer in the description of "Exit Music" as not the last Rebus novel, but Rebus's retirement novel. Rankin expects to revisit the Edinburgh he created in fiction, with Clarke as his central police officer character. In the same interview, Rankin suggests several reasons for his creation's popularity, despite the policeman's unlikeability. First, Rebus is an outsider, and many people can feel as though they do not fit in as well as they think they should; secondly, Rebus is a curmudgeon, and there is a pleasure in such characters; and finally, he does not