"Fleshmarket" is the Scots term for butcher's market.

The novel was the basis for the second episode in the second Rebus television series starring Ken Stott which was aired in 2006.

[1] 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 protégée Siobhan Clarke are still investigating some seemingly unconnected cases.

The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; 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.

[2] The book uses two new settings: a sink estate divided between the indigenous population and refugees (based on Wester Hailes),[3] and a small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum seekers (based on Dungavel).