Fleshmarket Close

infobox Book |
name = Fleshmarket Close
orig title =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Ian Rankin
cover_artist =
country = Scotland
language = English
series =
genre = Detective fiction
publisher = Orion Books
release_date = 2004
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 440 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-7528-5896-3
preceded_by = A Question of Blood
followed_by = The Naming of the Dead

"Fleshmarket Close" is a 2004 crime novel by Ian Rankin, and is named after a real close off Edinburgh's Cockburn Street. It is the fifteenth of the Inspector Rebus novels. It was released in the USA under the title "Fleshmarket Alley". It was the second episode in the second Rebus television series starring Ken Stott, airing in 2006.

Plot summary

Detective Inspector John Rebus has no desk to work from, as a hint from his superiors that he should consider retirement, but he and his protegee Siobhan Clarke are still investigating some seemingly unconnected cases. The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; stolen medical skeletons turn up embedded in a concrete floor; a Kurdish journalist is brutally murdered; and the son of a Glasgow gangster has moved into the Edinburgh vice scene.

The book uses two new settings; a sink estate divided between racist thugs and refugees (based on Wester Hailes), and a small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum-seekers (based on Dungavel).