Once again revolves around DI Rebus. The G8 summit at Gleneagles is going
on, an MP falls to his death over Edinburgh Castle ramparts, his colleague's
parents take part in a peace rally and are bludgeoned into hospitalization by a
local thug, the parents also harbour a secret agent who happens to be the sister
of the dead MP, a local big-wig is having it away with another of his
colleagues's sister (who is a natural adversary in the force of the former
colleague), and the secret agent muddies the water by killing two other
no-gooders to make it look like serial murder rather than revenge. Then there
is a difficult hob-nob from London police, an industrialist who uses bodyguards
imitating policemen, Rebus' difficult own superior (who suspends Rebus from
duty, with absolutely no implication to the story at all), and Big Ger Cafferty
(the local criminal, Rebus' long-time adversary) who seems to know everything
that is happening.
It is a great melange of people and things happening, and in the end there is
not so much connection between everything as might first appear: Rankin's usual
dose of reality into everything. As usual with Rankin, the reading pleasure is
in the interactions between the numerous characters, and, while the plot lines
are solid, they feel definitely subservient to the cause, and the book, for all
it is worth, is a day-in-the-life of a Scottish detective (albeit actually an
interesting... week).
As ever, Rankin gets a high re-read factor because of the quality of the
writing, but this is not top-shelf simply because the plotting is too much of
what you already get on telly (to boot, there is a lot of people being in one
place at one time, and then somewhere else on the other side of town/country ten
minutes later). |
