Review of Rebus's Scotland

Ian Rankin is allegedly taking a year off - but a funny thing happens when you are as successful as Rankin. You cease to become an individual author and become an industry. All of a sudden publishers, and PR agencies, and all the staff that work at them are relying on your work. So you can imagine how well, "I'm taking a year off" goes down with this lot!

As a result you get The Flood - a novella that he wrote as a student and which in the foreword he admits isn't really that good, but which nonetheless his publisher is willing to flog at 13.99! Or a Rebus collection...or a picture book with lots of photaes and big margins to fill up the space.

Rebus's Scotland features the photos of Tricia Malley and Ross Gillespie whose work features of the covers of the UK novels. They are fine pictures fleeting, cold, haunting and beautiful. Rankin uses excerpts of the Rebus novels to illustrate the main themes in his novels and reveals that much of the detail in the book comes from his own experiences.

Fans will buy it - that's the whole point of this slighly grubby venture - but all in all it feels a little empty. You can only imagine what the man would make of such coffee-table fodder!