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Written by Ian Rankin - Audio book performed by James Gale - Abridged Fiction - 6 COMPACT DISCS - 7 hours

Publisher, Hachette Audio (April 2007)

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When the leaders of the free world descend on Scotland for an international conference, every cop in the country is needed to control the mob of protestors in Edinburgh's streets . . . except one. Inspector John Rebus's reputation precedes him, so while Presidents Bush and Putin confer in isolated splendor, Rebus mans an empty police station, safely out of the way where he can't offend any visiting dignitaries.

Then a delegate falls to his death during a pre-conference dinner at Edinburgh Castle, and Rebus is given what looks like a simple suicide to write up. But even as he keeps it out of the headlines, Rebus probes where no probing is wanted-and doesn't like the sidesteps and power plays his questions engender. And this week Edinburgh is a dangerous place to be: Rebus also investigates the death of a recently paroled rapist, murdered in a particularly grisly fashion. The discovery of more bodies leads Rebus to consider an unexpected and politically unacceptable possibility.

Amid political drama and street theater, and with egos on parade at every level, Rebus works the thorniest case he's ever encountered, with danger at a scale beyond his darkest imaginings. A state-of-the-world novel peopled by real characters, The Naming of the Dead is Rebus's most challenging case yet, and Edgar Award winner Ian Rankin at his very best.

About the Author: "I grew up in a small coal-mining town in central Scotland. I was always interested in stories. Even though the town had no book stores (and my parents were not great readers), I made full use of the local library. It was mind-boggling to me that (at the age of 11 or 12) I could not gain access to a movie theatre to see such classics as 'The Godfather', 'A Clockwork Orange' or 'Straw Dogs', yet no one stopped me from borrowing these titles from my library. Books seemed to have about them a whiff of the illicit and the dangerous. That was all the encouragement I needed. I went to university in 1978, joined a punk band (on vocals), and continued to write a lot of song lyrics and poems. However, I found that my poems were actually 'telling stories', and so started to write short stories.

A few of these found publication and even won some awards. Then one story raged out of control and became my first novel. It was never published, but that didn't matter: I was now a novelist. I stumbled on Detective Inspector John Rebus by accident while attempting to write an update of 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde': Rebus would be my Jekyll, his Hyde a character from his past. Along the way, I discovered that a cop is a good 'tool', a way of looking at contemporary society, its rights and wrongs. Rebus, I decided, would stick around. Meantime, I finished university, moved to London for four years (where I worked first as a college secretary, later as a hi-fi/audio journalist), then rural France for six years. Both my sons were born in France. By the time the oldest had reached school age, we'd decided to move back to Scotland. I now live and work in Edinburgh, and the Rebus novels have gone from strength to strength in terms of sales and recognition.

Favourite/inspirational books include: pretty much anything by James Ellroy, Ruth Rendell, Raymond Chandler. Plus classics of Scottish Literature such as Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', James Hogg's 'Confessions of a Justified Sinner', and Muriel Spark's 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'. If I had to choose a few others to take to my desert island, I'd probably opt for Martin Amis's 'Money', Anthony Burgess's 'Earthly Powers', Anthony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time' and Ian McEwan's 'First Love, Last Rites'.