In this, the fifteenth outing of Ian
Rankin’s Edinburgh based detective, Rebus and protégé Siobhan Clarke have been
farmed out to the suburbs having lost their office space at their old St Leonards
police station. Rebus feels sidelined, but at least it gives him freedom to
operate as he does best – independently and unconventionally.
When a murder crops up in one of the
outlying housing projects he is quickly on the scene. The estate has a high
proportion of immigrants and asylum seekers, and the victim is one of them.
Meanwhile Clarke is contacted by the parents
of a girl whose rape (and subsequent suicide) she had investigated some years
ago; now the other daughter has gone missing.
Added to the murder and missing persons are
two bodies found buried in a cellar in Fleshmarket Close, just off the Royal
Mile. Both Rebus and Clarke attend but there is something fishy about the find
as the bodies turn out to be just bones picked clean.
The three cases develop with the expected
complexity, interweaving and connecting (or not) and with the expected
complications for Rebus’s and Clarke’s personal lives (will a clinch in the
previous book translate to more) and professional prospects (Clarke is on the
way up, Rebus is treading water).
In these later Rebus books Rankin always
injects some topicality and while this dates from 2004 the context of
immigration still has resonance today. The issues are handled well enough –
exposing prejudice and inhumanity – with Rebus characteristically cutting in
his assessment of all those around him, be they do-gooder or bigot. While
unable to do much to right all the wrongs he sees, he does what he can, while
solving the crimes, to help those in need that cross his path.
Rankin rarely disappoints and this outing is
well up to standard, benefitting from being a bit shorter (at 400 pages) and
tighter than its immediate predecessors.
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