Cate Simpson steps behind the police cordon at a new exhibition celebrating Edinburgh’s best-loved gumshoe
There’s a pleasing circularity to this exhibition at the National Library. Ian Rankin wrote much of Knots and Crosses, the first Rebus book, in the reading room here, thanks to a PhD thesis on Muriel Spark that fell by the wayside. With Rankin’s famed protagonist Inspector Rebus packed off into retirement this year, it feels right that this celebration of his 20-year journey should be housed in the place where it began.
I have a confession to make at this point: I haven’t read any of the Rebus novels, or at least I hadn’t before this weekend. So I was curious to discover whether a display of Rebus artifacts would hold much interest for me. I half expected a motley collection of titbits for the die-hard fan, but although there’s a bit of that here, there is also something for those with only a passing acquaintance with the series.
For kids, there is a murder mystery to investigate, in which the man himself is a suspect in a grisly crime inside the Library (I peeked, but I won’t give away the ending). There is also a cordoned-off ‘crime scene’, where you can peer at things through a magnifying glass or dust for fingerprints. I was tempted, but the tables were set at that slightly too-low height that quietly reminds adults that they’re supposed to be reading the informative explanations of DNA and fingerprinting behind them rather than getting sand all over the floor.
