(4.5 / 5)
John Rebus has given up cigarettes. Seems he is waiting for the results of x-ray. If the shadow on his lung won’t deter his acerbic wit, then nothing will. Rebus has also givin up his job. Sort of. He’s now retired, bored, and in need of a hobby, and so finds himself begging to solve an old, unsolved murder. DI Siobhan Clarke has mercy on him and gives Rebus some case files for an unsolved murder from 1978 which involved a wayward wife, a rock band, and a mob boss. But who done it? That is what Rebus needs to discover.
Gangster Daryl Christie has been beaten near to death, which becomes Clarke’s case. And when a former detective is fished out of the harbor, DI Malcolm Fox is assigned to assist. The three cases seem to intersect, which then brings the three former colleagues (Rebus, Clarke, and Fox) into an uncomfortable alliance. But are they separate cases?
Rankin’s 21st book in the Inspector Rebus police procedural series has masterfully woven his adept characters with suspenseful plots, and colored them all with the seedy side of Edinburgh. The story is a gleeful excoriation on members of the greedy elite, and Rankin juxtaposes those supposedly noble characters with the ruthless criminal class. Though Rebus is shadowy in this book, perhaps echoing the shadowed lung, and other characters take front and center in the investigation, it is Rebus who untangles the web of intrigue.