<p>Ian Rankin’s world-famous crime series features as a main character the city of Edinburgh, where Inspector Rebus relentlessly wanders, drives, drifts, tails and chases suspects. In each novel, the narrative visits a number of referential locations and examines them through the prism of time, slowly building a diachronic map of the city. As the series spans more than thirty years, the urban <em>locus</em> evolves as the narrative unfolds. Ian Rankin takes stock of new urban developments in real time and draws on them to feed his plots. Piecing a map together therefore remains a work in progress, and the literary geography of Edinburgh gazes out at an endlessly elusive horizon.</p>