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
Rather Be the Devil Rather Be the Devil Rather Be the Devil is the 21st instalment in the Inspector Rebus series of crime novels, published in November 2016. "Rather Be the Devil" topped the bestseller charts for hardback fiction. The title was inspired by a John Martyn song from his 1973 album "Solid Air". The novel opens with Rebus and his girlfriend, Deborah Quant (who is the latest pathologist in Edinburgh) dining in a restaurant. Rebus is reminded of the death in 1978 of Maria Turquand in the Caledonian hotel which is adjacent to the restaurant. DI Malcolm Fox is at Gartcosh where Police