In my view, Ian Rankin has for some long time been the best detective thriller writer. John Rebus, the cop who bends the rules to put criminals in jail is a character unlike any other detective one kind find in this genre of literature. Here is the summary from Amazon of this particular novel…
“A convict is brutally murdered in his locked cell deep in the heart of Scotland’s most infamous prison. Sleeping in a cell across the floor lies John Rebus, the equally notorious detective. Stripped of his badge and estranged from his police family, he is now fighting for his own life – protected by an old nemesis but always one wrong move away from the shank. As new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even this legendary figure struggles to keep his head.
They say old habits die hard, though. The death stirs Rebus’s deductive – and manipulative – impulses, setting off a domino-chain of scheming criminals, corrupt prison guards and perhaps only one or two good souls who may see it all through.
But how do you find a killer in a place full of them?”
For the full 332. or so pages, Rankin keeps us all in suspense, and even at the end there are two plot twists that one is not likely to see coming, at least in the case of the next to last one. I have read all 25 of these novels and they are real page turners, and they have a particular local ambiance, namely they are set in Scotland, and more particularly in Edinburgh, the city that spawned Arthur Conan Doyle, and before him Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott, not to mention that author of both the Harry Potter and now the Cormorant Strike series.
To catch you a bit, John Rebus is himself in prison, for having apparently killed the crime king pen of Edinburgh, Big Ger Cafferty, something Rebus denies, but in the last novel he just about suffocated the crime lord. This novel revolves around a pornography crime, a missing teen, and a murder in the very prison where Rebus is incarcerated. But can John solve crimes with one hand literally tied behind his back, while his own life is in danger from numerous thugs as his cellmates? Inquiring minds want to know.
I recommend this whole series to you and if you don’t want to go back to the beginning then I’d say start with book 20– Even Dogs in the Wild.
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