If You Loved Rebus Try These British Detectives
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- Peter Robinson launched the Inspector Banks series in 1987 with Gallows View, published by Viking Canada.
- The series spans 27 novels between 1987 and 2017, all set in the fictional town of Eastvale, North Yorkshire.
- Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse debuted in 1975 with Last Bus to Woodstock; the final Morse novel, The Remorseful Day, was published by Macmillan in 1999.
- Morse appeared in 13 novels between 1975 and 1999, all set in and around Oxford.
- Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series launched in 1987 with Knots and Crosses and concluded in 2023 with A Heart Full of Headstones, comprising 24 novels.
- ITV adapted Inspector Banks into a television series starring Stephen Tompkinson that ran for five seasons between 2010 and 2016.
Gallows View — Peter Robinson
Your entry point to the Inspector Banks universe — and it's a slow-burn thriller where voyeurism is the symptom, not the disease.
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has just relocated from the Met to Eastvale, a fictional Yorkshire town that's all stone cottages and simmering resentment. A peeping tom is terrorising the neighbourhood, and when the surveillance turns violent — an elderly woman is murdered — Banks realises he's dealing with something darker than suburban creepiness. Robinson writes interiors like they're crime scenes: every closed curtain, every unlocked door, every neighbour who "keeps to themselves" is a loaded gun. This is the novel that sets the template for the series — Banks is cerebral, stubborn, and out of his depth in a place where everyone has known everyone else since primary school. Explore our current copy of Gallows View. Browse more Crime books at Patina.
Wednesday's Child — Peter Robinson
Book six in the series, and it's the one where Banks confronts institutional rot — missing children, religious cults, and the kind of poverty that makes people invisible.
A seven-year-old girl disappears from a council estate, and the mother's story doesn't hold. Banks and his sergeant Susan Gay are following leads that point toward a commune masquerading as a spiritual refuge, and the investigation drags them into the gaps between social services, family court, and the police's own prejudices. Robinson's interrogation scenes are scalpel-sharp — you can feel the claustrophobia of the interview room, the power dynamics, the moment when someone's alibi cracks. By the halfway mark, you're not just trying to solve the case; you're trying to understand what kind of system lets kids fall through. Explore our current copy of Wednesday's Child. Browse more Crime books at Patina.
The Remorseful Day — Colin Dexter
The final Inspector Morse novel, and Dexter gives his hero a death scene — but not before one last case that's equal parts murder mystery and elegy.
Morse is dying. He's got diabetes, he's drinking anyway, and he's obsessed with a year-old murder in the village of Burford that the local force closed too quickly. A woman found dead in her cottage; a case that felt off from the start. Dexter's prose here is quieter than the earlier Morse novels — less crossword-puzzle cleverness, more melancholy. The investigation doubles as Morse's reckoning with his own life: the relationships he never committed to, the music he loved more than people, the fact that he's going to die in Oxford, alone, with only Sergeant Lewis to bear witness. It's devastating, and it's the best send-off a character like Morse could ask for. Explore our current copy of The Remorseful Day. Browse more Crime books at Patina.
If you're coming off a Rebus binge and need that same fix — detectives who are brilliant and broken, cases that expose the rot under the floorboards, British settings where the weather is always miserable and the pubs are always full — Banks and Morse are your next obsessions. Robinson gives you Yorkshire procedurals that feel like sociological autopsies; Dexter gives you Oxford puzzles that double as memento mori. As of April 2026, Patina's Crime collection includes rotating preloved copies of both series, and we ship Australia-wide from Sydney. Shop all Crime books at Patina Paperbacks →
Where can I buy secondhand Inspector Banks novels in Australia?
Patina Paperbacks stocks rotating preloved copies of the Inspector Banks series, including early titles like Gallows View and Wednesday's Child. We're based in Sydney and ship free Australia-wide on orders over $29. Check current Crime stock here.
Is Inspector Morse similar to Inspector Rebus?
Yes and no. Morse and Rebus are both brilliant, self-destructive loners who solve cases through sheer bloody-mindedness, but Morse is an Oxford aesthete — classical music, cryptic crosswords, pints of real ale — while Rebus is a working-class Edinburgh cop who lives on cigarettes and spite. If you loved Rebus's moral complexity, you'll love Morse's existential dread.
Which Peter Robinson novel should I read first?
Start with Gallows View — it's the first Inspector Banks novel, published in 1987, and it establishes Banks's character, his Yorkshire beat, and Robinson's procedural style. You can read the series out of order, but the early books reward reading chronologically because Banks's personal life evolves across the arc.
What's the difference between Inspector Banks and Inspector Morse?
Banks is a Yorkshire DCI who's pragmatic, middle-class, and emotionally guarded; Morse is an Oxford DI who's erudite, melancholic, and allergic to commitment. Banks novels are grittier, more socially grounded — think council estates, domestic violence, institutional failures. Morse novels are more puzzle-driven, steeped in Oxford's academic culture, with a recurring theme of mortality and regret. Both are character-driven procedurals, but Robinson writes social realism; Dexter writes philosophical whodunits.
Are Inspector Banks books still in print?
Yes, most of the Inspector Banks series remains in print through Pan Macmillan in the UK and HarperCollins in North America. That said, the early paperbacks — Gallows View, A Dedicated Man, A Necessary End — are increasingly hard to find as first editions or vintage printings, which is where Patina's preloved stock comes in. We hunt down the older spines so you can own the series the way it was first published.