Without much debate, Ian Rankin is rightly ranked as the leading writer of detective fiction in Europe, and in particular in the United Kingdom. He has created two characters Detectives John Rebus and Siobhan Clarke who rival Sherlock Holmes in their abilities to get to the bottom of things. This latest 325 page thriller is so fast-paced that it makes Grisham novels look like they are dawdling. The latest novel A Song for the Dark Times was written before the pandemic hit but edited while the lockdown proceeded in the U.K. The focus of these novels is Scotland, and Rankin, like the author of the Harry Potter novels lives in Edinburgh, where most of the action in all 23 of these novels (plus some short stories) takes place.
For the last several novels (and I’ve read them all) Rebus has been retired, but not allowing himself to be put out to pasture just yet. He keeps helping Siobhan (pronounced Shiv-Vaughn) with her cases, but in this novel, it’s Rebus to the rescue of his only child Samantha who lives on the northwest coast of Scotland and is ‘in the picture’ for having killed her ex-partner, Keith. But Rebus is now not the man he was 30 years prior. He has COPD (having stopped smoking, and doing little drinking) and has had to move to a first floor apartment in Edinburgh as stairs are not his friends any more. Indeed, his only constant companion in retirement his is tiny dog named Brillo.
This novel probes the issue of how long dormant cases can suddenly come to life, because anger, and the desire for revenge seemingly never dies with some people. Caught up in a web of lies and deceit and denials in a small town in northern Scotland, Samantha is struggling to keep her head above water now that her former partner Keith has been murdered. I will not spoil the surprises in the novel, which actually has a second plot line as well about a murdered Arab man in Edinburgh but I will say that this novel keeps you reading right to the end. It is suspenseful and you will not guess the ending in all likelihood. It’s a real page-turner full of intrigue and local Scottish color, and worthy of being put on your New Years reading list right away.
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