Fancy living like Rebus? Now’s the chance, with his city flat on the market
The flat where best-selling author Ian Rank in created Inspector John Rebus – and which is home to the flawed detective in the crime thrillers – has gone on the market for sale.
Fans of the gritty whodunnnits can get a glimpse behind the scenes of Rebus’s life if they have asp are £425,000- plus to spend on a stunning tenement flat in Edinburgh’s Marchmont district.
The first thing any prospective purchaser s of number 24 Arden Street will notice is there is no vast collection of vinyl records, no tell-tale empty bottles of his favourite dram and no left-overs from the night before’s carry out.
And outside there are shiny new cars and no sign of the now-retired and often controversial former officer’ s battered, but trusty old Saab, usually somewhat badly parked roughly, but not always, adjacent to the property where Rebus has lived through all of Rankin’s 22 best-sellers.
In a previous interview, Rank in, now 60 and happi lyre siding in a £800,000 home overlooking The Meadows, said Marchmont was an unlikely place for a poorly paid public servant to be living.
He said: “It’s just so unrealistic. There were no cops in a place like that – it was mainly students. All the cops lived in places like Oxgangs or West Lothian.”
In the detective books, Rebus is eyeing up a move to some - where new, p ossibly a bungalow due to his chronic lung problem as he can no longer cope with the daily struggle up and down the close stairs to the second floor of the sandstone property. His “home” is being marketed by Clyde Property and details are available on a number of popular estate agency websites.
The sales blurb even mentions Rank in and Re bus’ s connection to the flat, stating: “Author Ian Rankin famously revealed that this flat was the home address of his popular character Inspector Rebus.”
The agent adds: “The flat is in a great location for young couples and professionals, but would also bean excellent acquisition for a buy-tolet investor .”