After serving in Northern Ireland he applied to undergo selection for the SAS, but after a horrendous ordeal in training, left the army and joined the Lothian and Borders Police.
As a woman, she faces obstacles to acceptance in the police force, especially since, like Rebus, she enjoys the challenges of solving cases rather than administrative work or networking.
Detective Chief Inspector James Page is in charge of the Gayfield Square CID during the period of Rebus's retirement (starting with Standing in Another Man's Grave, 2012).
DCI Graham Sutherland first appears in In a House of Lies in charge of the Major Incident Team; he includes DI Siobhan Clarke in his group.
He appears in the novels from Strip Jack (1992) to Let it Bleed (1996), at the beginning of which he crashes the car in which he and Rebus are pursuing two young criminals; he survives but is badly hurt.
Detective Inspector Alister Flower is based at St Leonard's, Edinburgh police station in three novels, starting with The Black Book (1993).
He is described as a bear of a man; despite this imposing physicality, his early stint in CID (including time working with John Rebus) was not a success.
He pays to keep his father in a nursing home until, in Even Dogs in the Wild, the old man dies; he also does his best to support his sister Jude, who is an alcoholic, a gambling addict, and full of spite.
However, in Saints of the Shadow Bible he needs Rebus's help on an investigation, and they develop a rapport; he also meets and admires Siobhan Clarke, and the three of them become a kind of team.
He and Clarke establish a platonic relationship in Even Dogs in the Wild but it is spoiled when he is promoted to Gartcosh instead of her (and also when he allows her to be investigated for a leak to the media for which he is himself responsible).
Detective Inspector Stefan Gilmour appears in Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013) and the related short story, "Dead and Buried."
Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes is a police officer who is a trusted, though often mystified, subordinate of Rebus in the early novels and short stories.
She first appears in Set in Darkness (2000) as part of a team from various Edinburgh police departments assigned to assess security at the as-yet-unbuilt Scottish Parliament.
In The Falls (2001) she has a crisis when DCI Templer appoints her as Press Liaison and she is not able to handle a difficult presentation; Rebus uses her on his case but she resents the whole situation.
Detective Constable Christine Esson is part of the Gayfield Square police station CID starting with Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013).
She works with databases and, when cold cases necessitate it, archives, researching leads not only for DI Siobhan Clarke but also for Rebus, who may or may not have any official status at Gayfield.
Doctor Curt is a forensic pathologist and medical examiner who appears frequently in the Rebus series, beginning in 1992 with Strip Jack and ending with The Naming of the Dead (2006).
He first appears in Knots and Crosses (1987), where he is a strong point-of view character as he pursues a story about Rebus's spectacular corruption; when this thesis fails him, he moves to London.
Stevens returns to the Rebus series in full force in Dead Souls (1999), where he tries to write a book about a serial killer and becomes his subject's victim.
He appears in The Black Book, where he focuses Rebus on the Central Hotel fire five years earlier, and in Mortal Causes, where he is a source of information about Sword and Shield, a pro-Scottish independence group of the past.
Mairie Henderson first appears in The Black Book (1993) as a "hungry" young newspaper reporter—not only for stories, but for food; Rebus frequently treats her to a meal.
In Set in Darkness (2000), Cafferty engineers a curtailment of his prison term on compassionate grounds (he has faked having cancer), and Rebus is horrified to find him singing Robert Burns in public.
He is the teenage brother of a serial killer's victim in Standing in Another Man's Grave (2012), but he has a plan to take over the business of his mother's lover, a gangster.
In The Hanging Garden (1998), she is living with a journalist, Ned Farlowe, but she is hospitalised after a hit-and-run, and in a coma for most of the book, reuniting her parents, Patience, and Michael Rebus at her bedside.
In A Song for the Dark Times (2020), Samantha is distraught when Keith goes missing; Rebus arrives to investigate what turns out to be a murder in which Sam is the obvious suspect.
He is an important character in Knots and Crosses (1987), where he is picking up money dealing drugs and eventually goes to prison for it; he also hypnotises John, allowing him to access traumatic memories of his SAS "training" to solve a case and also to resolve his undiagnosed PTSD.
Although he seems carefree, doing drugs and sleeping with one of the students, he is reading up on therapeutic hypnosis and seems ready to make a career change; at the end of the book, he is going back to his family.
Deborah Quant, a medical examiner and university professor, first appears in Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013), where she is described from Rebus's point of view as having red hair and blue eyes and being in her mid-forties, but with no wedding ring (chapter 22).
Rather Be the Devil opens and closes with Rebus and Quant having dinner out; she has given him the gift of a diseased lung in a jar of formaldehyde to help him stop smoking.
In Mortal Causes (1994) it is clear that they have had many conversations over a Guinness, and Leary asks Rebus to pay attention to the Catholic youth center in Pilmuir, propelling him into a major plot thread.