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
Inspector Rebus his daughter Sammy (Samantha Rebus) he has five women in his life: Rhona, his separated wife; Patience Aitken, his ex-girlfriend; Gill Templer, his immediate boss and sometime girlfriend; Jean Burchill, lady friend and friend of Gill Templer, who first appears in "The Falls". In the later books, particularly when Rebus is retired, his girlfriend is Deborah Quant, a pathologist. His protege is DS Siobhan Clarke, with whom he does not have a romantic relationship. While Rebus is old fashioned in his choices and opinions, he is not a bigot. This comes to the fore clearly in Fleshmarket Close. In this