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UK Holidays - Set in Darkness: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Inspector Rebus Novels)
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $7.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780312977894
ISBN: 0312977891
Label: St. Martin's Minotaur
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2001-11-19
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
Studio: St. Martin's Minotaur
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Editorial Reviews:
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A man dead for twenty years is found behind a wall in the renovated Parliament Building of newly independent Scotland. A tramp jumps off of a bridge and leaves behind 400,000. And Roddy Grieve, a political candidate and the favorite son of a famous family, is killed...Two of Detective Inspector John Rebus's team are assigned to the old case. His protg Siobhan Clarke takes on the homeless man puzzle. Roddy's high profile murder should be his. But higher-ups hand it to a young bootlicker, creating a bitter Rebus, a loose cannon, and a cop mad enough to go one step too far...From an illicit affair with a suspect to a battle with the bottle, Rebus is soon wrestling with his dark side. But when he links Roddy's murder with a killer he knows all too well, he has to face his own demons-if it's not too late. For when passion, power, and money are at stake, even the best policeman can die...AUTHORBIO: IAN RANKIN won England's prestigious Gold Dagger Award for Black and Blue, which was also an Edgar Award nominee. His latest Rebus novel, Dead Souls, was nominated for another Gold Dagger prize. Rankin lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and two sons.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: I Was A Little Disappointed
Comment: This was my first Ian Rankin novel. There are three investigations going on in this novel and at the end they all tie in together. John Rebus is well drawn and is interesting. I found the story dragging at times. It's a complex crime novel. I rate this a A-.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A long and slow spiral
Comment: I have been reading this series in sequence, so I have been entertained by how Rankin is getting better at creating complex and convoluted plot twists and marveled at how refined his character development has become.
I believe this book marked a turning point. Rebus' drinking had always been a continuous and important sidebar of the story, it got relief earlier in the series. But when Rebus'friend Jack Morton was killed, Rebus fell off the wagon hard, and it really and truly made the character all the more complex and interesting. The drinking is now front and center and ruling his life and his work. Rebus can be seen to be in a slow death spiral towards uncontrollable depression, or does it? This is the beauty of the Inspector Rebus series, you begin to care about Rebus, no matter how bad he is with truth, women, relationships, and rules. As in a relation ship with real people, no one starts being completely hateful, but over the series of 12 books, I have come to know the character, I feel I know his history, and despite his odious state of de-evolution, I still care about the character because of the history that Rankin built up over the 12 books. I can't wait to read the rest of the series just for the Rebus development.
The mystery part involves three seemingly disparate deaths, one of a tramp, the second of a up and coming politician, and the third of a man whose death went unnoticed 20 years ago but he jumped back into the public consciousness in a very notable way. At first blush, I didn't think Rankin would be able to pull all this together into one story arc, but he did. I really should stop doubting his ability to do this. The procedure and methodology that Rankin uses to progress his story is once again, very enlightening. Mix in his accounting of the Scottish government and history, the history of 60's and 70's rock and roll, as well as his understated sarcastic asides makes this a very complex and enjoyable read, if you like life complicated, real, and not easily categorized nor understood. The story comes to an end, a very conclusive end, but also with a very depressing twist which sets Rebus up with a very difficult reality. You may not like it, but it is definitely a juicy beginning for the rest of the series.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Alfred Hitchcock would have loved John Rebus' Character
Comment: Once again (it's so repetitious) Ian Rankin has written a novel that is almost perfect in every way. The story just seems to grow as it goes along, and the characters appear as if this is just a narrative of some tragedy that actually happened and Rankin is just the reporter.
A murder (of a man of a well known family who is standing for the Scottish Parliment and brother of an MP), a suicide (by a man we would call a street person) and a dead body (murdered twenty years ago and wall up in a building under renovation. All this is happening around and in the new Scottish Parliment building and John and Siobhan are off on the most interesting story so far (until the next one).
With the imminent retirement of the Chief Super, Farmer Watson, we know that John is in for trouble with whoever becomes his next boss. It's nice to see Watson get in a few good licks before he leaves the scene. Another DI (the blue eyed boy), is sent by Fettes to watch over this case which they feel is too high profile for a maverick like Rebus.
Of course Rebus gets on his bad side immediately, not to mention everyone else. But with the tenacity that he brings to everything his does, Rebus will find out the truth in the end. What he's not expecting is how. Once again a great read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's a stretch to tie this all together.
Comment:
A body found in a bricked up fireplace after twenty years, a murdered candidate for Scottish parliament, and a suicide with a big secret and it all ties together? Well, it's a bit of a stretch in this one. Renkin works hard and it shows. This is a disparate lot of puzzles, and it is really reaching to work them together. Without the deus ex machina in the form of Rebus's favorite foe, Big Ger it wouldn't really happen at all. It is this occasional dependence on the Scottish crime lord that often works against the series, sometimes it seems an easy way out when Rebus needs something done, either directly or indirectly, and in pops Cafferty. This is a solid outing, but too many characters pop in and out without real purpose making the novel probably 100 pages more than it needs to be.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Book that is Dark, Brooding and Forbidding and Very Alive
Comment: Hard-drinking, hard-smoking, divorced Edinburgh cop DI John Rebus is a man who does things his way as he moves through the brooding city of Edinburgh, searching for both his own lost soul and the criminals who lurk in its dark places. DI Derek Linford, in contrast, does things the boss's way, much to Rebus's chagrin.Both are seconded to the police liaison team for the new Scottish Parliament at Queensberry House when a corpse is found hidden behind a fireplace in one of the parliament buildings. From the condition of the body, it appears that it's been there a long time, years, decades. A few days later the body of Roddy Grieve, a Labor Party candidate for a seat in the new parliament, is found on the grounds. Grieve comes from a well-known Scottish family. His mother is a famous artist, his brother is a Tory MP, his sister is an ex-supermodel married to an ageing rock star and there is another brother who went missing 20 years ago. Sniffing about for clues as only he can, Rebus comes to suspect the body in the fireplace may be connected to Grieve's murder. Meanwhile, Rebus's former partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, is driving home one evening when she happens to see a homeless man leap to his death from a bridge. Following up, she discovers that the supposedly poor and destitute man had over £400,000 in a building society account. He also had the same name as the man whose remains were found behind that fireplace. Add to the above the escalating violence of a serial rapist who targets women in singles clubs and, as if that isn't enough, Rebus must face the unexpected prison release of his old nemesis, Edinburgh crime boss Big Ger Cafferty, whose interest in Rebus isn't exactly friendly. And through all this, Rebus has to work alongside Linford, a paper pusher on the fast track to promotion. Little of modern Edinburgh has escaped Rankin's attention here. In fact, one might mistake this excellent novel as a travel guide about where not to go when visiting there. However, there is hope in this book, too. It's just that sometimes it's just a little hard to find, especially when Rankin writes about, corruption, homelessness and despair as if he's been there and seen it all. Yes, this is a dark book. It's also a book that stands apart from others in the genre. It's the kind of book the others aspire to. Haley Lawford, SV Cheerleader Too
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