The Beat Goes On (short story collection)

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The Beat Goes On
The Beat Goes on.jpg
First edition
Author Ian Rankin
CountryScotland
LanguageEnglish
Series Inspector Rebus
Genre Short Stories
Publisher Orion Books
Publication date
2014
Media typePrint
Pages611
ISBN 978-1-4091-5157-9

The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Short Stories is an anthology of all the Inspector Rebus short stories (30) by Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin, plus the novella Death Is Not the End; though the Rebus short story "Well Shot" published in 2nd Culprit (1993) is not included. It is Rankin's third collection of short stories

Published in 2014, the paperback version published in 2015 includes two stories not in the hardback edition; a new story "Cinders" written for Christmas 2014 and an old story from his files "My Shopping Day" which was first published in "Herbert in Motion and Other Stories" (1997).

The first story "Dead and Buried" is set in the mid-1980s when Rebus was learning the ropes at Summerhall Police Station, and "The Very Last Drop" is set during a tour of a brewery immediately after Rebus’s retirement in Exit Music , a retirement present from Siobhan Clarke who goes with him (written to be read aloud at a charity night at Edinburgh’s Caledonian Brewery). "The Very Last Drop" was written to help the work of Royal Blind. [1]

All the twelve Rebus stories in A Good Hanging and Other Stories are included: they cover a chronological year in Rebus’s life; "Playback" in March, "A Good Hanging" in August during the Festival Fringe and "Auld Lang Syne" in December. [2] Also included are the seven Rebus stories in Beggars Banquet which has fourteen other stories, 21 in total. There are six uncollected stories from magazines and newspapers, often for a Christmas issue so set in the festive season. There are two new stories, "The Passenger" and "A Three-Pint Problem".

In the Preface (page 1) and Rankin on Rebus (pages 595-609) Rankin discusses Rebus and writing him.

Further Copyright Information (pages 610-611) gives the year of first publication as shown below and where published. Up till about 1997 they are ©Ian Rankin, then they are ©John Rebus Limited.

In the notes AGH indicates that the story was first published in A Good Hanging and Other Stories in 1992. BB indicates that the story was included in Beggars Banquet (2002), but these stories had been previously published elsewhere in magazines or newspapers.

Featured Short Stories:

YearTitleNotes
2013Dead and Buried
1990Playback
1992The Dean CurseAGH
1992Being FrankAGH
1992Concrete EvidenceAGH
1992Seeing ThingsAGH
1992A Good HangingAGH
1992Tit For TatAGH
1992Not ProvanAGH
1992SundayAGH
1992Auld Lang SyneAGH
1992The Gentlemen's ClubAGH
1992Monstrous TrumpetAGH
1997My Shopping Day
1991Talk ShowBB
1992Trip TrapBB
1993Castle DangerousBB
1992In The FrameBB
1994Facing The MusicBB
1995Window of OpportunityBB
1998Death Is Not the EndBB
2000No Sanity ClauseBB
2003Tell Me Who to Kill
2002Saint Nicked
2005Atonement
2005Not Just Another Saturday
2010Penalty Clause
2014The Passenger
2014A Three-Pint Problem
2010The Very Last Drop
2014Cinders

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References

  1. ↑ Preface, page 1
  2. ↑ Preface, page 1
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