Three dead bodies at a public school in
South Queensferry on the edge of Edinburgh – two pupils (and a third wounded)
and an ex-SAS serviceman. Add a fourth
body, this one an ex-con, killed in a suspicious house fire in the inner city.
The two crimes are unrelated, apart from
their respective connections to DI John Rebus.
One of the dead school kids is the son of his cousin; the ex-con had
been threatening Rebus’s protégée DS Siobhan Clarke and now he is charred to a
crisp and Rebus has burns to his hands serious enough to warrant bandages that
severely impair elements of his lifestyle – such as holding pint glasses and
lighting cigarettes.
He cannot drive either, so when he is called
in to give his own ex-SAS (failed) insight into the school shooting he enlists
DS Clarke as his driver and factotum.
The two cases unfold in tandem, or maybe
that should be entwine, as neither is as straightforward as they first
seem. As is the tendency in these later
Rebus books, Siobhan Clarke gets at least an equal share of the action, which
does no harm by giving some relief from the curmudgeonly DI.
It is no spoiler to confirm that Rebus gets
to the bottom of it all in due course, despite the fact he is officially barred
from both investigations, as a near relative of the victim in one and a prime
suspect in the other.
Well up to standard for the series.
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