Results tagged “Ian Rankin” from Reading
My favourite Rebus read for some time, at number 11 in the series Set In Darkness feels like the gear change in many relationships - Derek Linford and Siobhan attempt three, ultimately doomed, dates, Siobhan recognises Rebus as friend and mentor, and Big Ger is, to Rebus's surprise and suspicion, released from Barlinne prison, which results in a revival of the love-hate relationship between Edinburgh's main gangster and his most well matched, most likely nemesis, DI Rebus.
And a cracking set of crimes too, all revolving around Scottish devolution.
Amazon.co.uk: Set In Darkness - Ian Rankin
Part of a previous haul from Frinton, I realised that I'd read A Question of Blood before, soon after settling down to read it. Still Rankin's Inspector Rebus is always a good read and A Question of Blood is no exception, with an ex-SAS loner shooting 3 school boys in an Edinburgh private school and Rebus falling under suspicion of the death of Siobhan's stalker....
Amazon.co.uk link: A Question of Blood - Ian Rankin
There are lots of dead souls in Inspector Rebus's 10th outing: psychotic serial killer Cary Oakes, Rebus's old Fife flame Janice, Janice's disappeared son Damon, recently released paedophile Darren Gough, retired policeman Alan Archibald obsessed by his search for his niece's murderer, the unexplained suicide of fellow cop Jim Margolies ... and more. Not much of Siobhan though - maybe because she's not a lost soul!
Excellent.
Amazon.co.uk link: Dead Souls - Ian Rankin
Finished off whilst 'baby sitting' B&R, Mortal Causes shows a sectarian side of Edinburgh that's little seen. A young man is found, murdered in a paramilitary style, his body hanging in one of Edinburgh's now-buried closes. As Rebus and Siobhan investigate, we're introduced to the sectarian underclass and undercurrents that exist in Edinburgh. To make things even more murky, Big Ger escapes from Barlinnie prison, and Abernethy from Special Branch turns up....
Amazon.co.uk link:
Mortal Causes - Ian Rankin
Siobhan appears, as does Big Ger, and we learn a little more about Rebus, this time in real Edinburgh locations - and with his fifth outing, Ian Rankin and John Rebus really hit their stride. A great read, with more than one black book and plenty of dirty deeds....
Amazon.co.uk: The Black Book - Ian Rankin
Early Rebus - still sans Siobhan; Brian isn't as nearly as satisfying a side kick.
A successful Scottish politician is discovered in flagrante in a brothel, and soon after his wife disappears... Meanwhile, there's a murderer on the loose who's modus operandi sees his victims consigned to a watery grave. Rebus' investigations take him from party houses in the Highlands to psychiatric prison wards.
Resurrection Men opens with Rebus acting somewhat out of character, albeit at the same time entirely believably given his curmudgeonly outlook on life... but throwing a mug of coffee at Gil Templer is a rather more active outburst than usual. Sent to reflect on the error of his way, Rebus hooks up with some fellow reprobate police as they are tasked with investigating a long closed cold case.... which, it turns out, they have rather more insight into than the records suggest....
Amazon.co.uk link: Resurrection Men - Ian Rankin
Gifted by Fran during our room/tent sharing time on Wild Frontiers' Himalayan Journey... an occult-tinged plot with connections into the gory story from Edinburgh's Enlightenment past - the cadaver collecting murdering spree of Burke and Hare and Burke's resultant fate: hanging, dissection and skin tanning.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Falls - Ian Rankin
Amazon tells me that this is the third Inspector Rebus novel, and it's certainly not the familiar John Rebus of later books.... With the London setting, both reader and Rebus are in unfamiliar territory, tracking a serial killer nicknamed the Wolfman.
I've not read the immediate precursor to Tooth And Nail, and I suspect that it covers some of the key background events mentioned in this third novel. Not that my ignorance of the detail spoilt this book for me. In fact, meeting a younger, less bolshy, more vulnerable Rebus was quite a surprise, and a pleasant and intriguing one at that.
Amazon.co.uk link: Tooth And Nail - Ian Rankin
Having just read Exit Music, I jumped right back to the start of the Rebus saga, to a now-distant 1987 and pre-PC (computer, not constable or correctness) police investigations.
A relatively quick read, as this first novel is shorter than the later ones, but I liked the snappier pace and Ian Rankin has/had not yet developed the seven day story arc format.
In Knots and crosses the focus is very much on DS John Rebus and his failed family life. You learn about his childhood, his time in the regular army and the SAS, and his return to civvy street and the scars he still carries. Fifteen years into his career as a copper, several strands of his past combine and return to haunt him.
It's always interesting to meet younger versions of characters you've got to know in their later years... The public and private faces of Edinburgh are more explicitly drawn than in later novels too.
Amazon.co.uk link: Knots and crosses - Ian Rankin
Exit Music is Ian Rankin's last track for DI Rebus's LP of working life. Set in the week running up to retirement Rebus and DS Siobhan Clarke (or most often than not simply 'Clarke' suggesting that she'll soon be stepping into Rebus's solitary shoes) start off investigating the murder of a dissident Russian poet and end up untangling the investment strategies of the pre credit crunch Russian oligarchs, and the attempted murder of Big Ger Cafferty.
A sad swansong.
Au revoir Rebus.
Amazon.co.uk links: Exit Music - Ian Rankin
With all eyes on the G8 summit at Gleneagles mass protests in support of the Make Poverty History campaign hit Edinburgh.... and bring Siobhan's somewhat hippie parents north of the border for the first time. Siobhan is torn between spending time with her folks and pursuing her big breakthrough opportunity after she finds the remains of a murder victim's clothing at a Clootie Well close to Gleneagles, which suggests there's a serial killer on the loose targeting released rapists.
Rebus meanwhile, inching ever closer to retirement, is warned off hijacking Siobhan's investigation, and from delving too deeply into the unexpected early demise of a minor politican who falls to his death from the walls of Edinburgh Castle.
There's politics and current affairs galore in The Naming of the Dead plus the equally tricky, emotional and powerful territory of family relationships too.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Naming of the Dead - Ian Rankin
John Rebus and sidekick Siobhan encounter all things 'body' and bloody - stolen medical skeletons, a murdered refugee journalist, a murdered rapist, lapdancing foreign students - with the themes of immigrants, incomers and outsiders, and villans, old and new.
Amazon.co.uk link: Fleshmarket Close - Ian Rankin
The last novel of the holiday, and another 'healthy' dose of Inspector Rebus. The Hanging Garden features drugs, prostitution and people trafficking from Eastern Europe, Nazi war crimes, an escalating gangland war between the criminal kingpins of Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh - and then it turns out that the Japanese Yakusa are somehow involved too. John Rebus on the other hand is trying to keep himself off the booze and saturated fats, but then a hit-and-run and botched police sting bring him face to face with the deaths of two people who mean the most to him....
Amazon.co.uk: The Hanging Garden - Ian Rankin
More Rebus in an attempt to crack the chronology, Let It Bleed precedes Black & Blue and starts with an epic car chase through snowy Edinburgh and onto the Forth Road Bridge.
When the two young crims choose commit suicide rather than answer questions as to their kidnapping of the Lord Provost's daughter, and a recently released con chooses to blow his head off at a local councillor's constituency meeting, Rebus finds himself drawn into the murky worlds of politics - both high establishment clay pigeon shoots and gangland council estates.
Amazon.co.uk: Let It Bleed - Ian Rankin
Hurrah! A new crime author whose works keep me turning the pages into the wee small hours. John Rebus replaces the somewhat lost Kay Scarpetta and moves alongside the much missed Aurelio Zen to keep company with Commisario Brunetti on my bookshelves.
Ian Rankin/Inspector Rebus have both been on my radar for yonks, but for some reason I'd thought they might not be to my taste. In fact, Rebus is as melancholic and much of a loner as Aurelio Zen, as tenacious as Guido Brunetti and as happy to work around the rules as both Venetians.
A Scottish setting can only carry bonus marks in my book, and it's just struck me that Scotland's position at the top of the British Isles, and it's past independence and glory, has many parallel with the Most Serene Republic of Venice - birthplace of Zen and Brunetti.
Amazon.co.uk link: Black & Blue - Ian Rankin