Reissued in the stunning new livery alongside EXIT MUSIC - new in paperback. New for this edition - specially commissioned Reading Group Notes. Ian Rankin is a regular No.1 bestseller and Guardian fastseller. He has won numerous awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger and the Edgar Award. Ian Rankin makes up more than 10% of all UK crime sales. He also constantly gets excellent reviews: 'Rankin is a master of his craft' Independent on Sunday 'No other writer in his chosen genre is producing books as rich and comprehensive as this: Dickensian, you might say' Literary Review 'Rankin is without doubt Britain's best crime novelist' Express 'They call his work crime fiction, but the adjective is superfluous ... these novels are totally absorbing. Once I start reading one, all else goes by the board till I have finished it' Spectator 'Arguably Scotland's finest living writer' The Times
Ian Rankin is a No.1 bestseller, and has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Diamond Dagger. He lives in Edinburgh, and in 2003 received an OBE for his services to literature.
This sprawling, overloaded mystery from a justly acclaimed and usually very reliable crime author is a disappointment. Through nine previous novels (Black and Blue, 1997, etc.), dogged Edinburgh copper John Rebus has been captivating company‘a man willing to place career before family and known to find solace in the bottle as his personal life takes an inevitable pounding. In this latest, Rebus's woes are strictly secondary (even as his daughter Samantha lies in a coma after a hit and run) as unsuspecting Edinburgh is rapidly transformed into the crime capital of the Western world. New hoodlum Tommy Telford is taking over, running whores imported from Eastern Europe, conspiring with Japanese businessmen to buy golf courses and selling drugs from the back of an ice cream van. All this upsets Ger Rafferty, the reigning hoodlum, who's stuck in prison and friendly with Rebus. Rebus makes a deal with Ger to take Telford down. Rebus also gives shelter to a suicidal prostitute and investigates the life and times of Joseph Lintz, a retired academic and alleged Nazi war criminal. A supremely implausible piece of plotting links Lintz to Telford's crowd. The evolution of Scotland's capital city into a gangster-riddled Babylon is bold, but all the canny procedural detail that Rankin is known for is lamentably jettisoned for a train wreck of a novel that aims for cinematic epic mayhem but achieves only narrative chaos instead. Author tour. (Oct.)
John Rebus (Let It Bleed, LJ 12/96), an Edinburgh detective-inspector and father of a 24-year-old daughter, feels especially protective of a young Serbian woman coerced into prostitution by a local mobster. The woman's inability to communicate adds to the frustration of an unproductive, ongoing police surveillance and the continuation of crimes associated with the mobster. At the same time, Rebus investigates a local ex-Nazi's alleged role in a French war crime. This is a realistic police procedural with a human touch, including the old question of guilt-by-following-orders. An excellent choice for all collections.
They call his work crime fiction, but the adjective is superfluous
... these novels are totally absorbing. Once I start reading one,
all else goes by the board till I have finished it * SPECTATOR
*
No one in Britain writes better crime novels today * EVENING
STANDARD *
Rankin's handling of the gangland plot, culminating in a sting
designed to entrap the multi-national mobsters as they raid a huge
drug-making plant is masterly * SUNDAY TIMES *
An addictive writer ... a remarkable talent * SPECTATOR *
No one writes more gripping stories than Rankin * TLS *
One of British crime writing's greatest characters: alongside
Holmes, Poirot and Morse * DAILY MAIL *
Ian Rankin is a genius -- Lee Child
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