From Publishers Weekly
For all the right reasons, Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus calls for comparison with Colin Dexter's Oxford copper Inspector Morse. Both spend a lot of time in pubs and bemoan the onset of middle age; each is a shrewd detective with a literary bent who operates in an academic town where clashes of culture beget victims. When much-loved politician Gregor Jack is discovered in a midnight raid on a discreet brothel, a surprising number of journalists are on hand--a situation that endangers Jack's political future. Jack's wealthy wife Elizabeth, a noted partygoer whose friends are equally well-heeled and hedonistic, can't be found. Her body is soon pulled from a nearby river, a fatality mirroring the recent murder of another, unidentified, woman. A drunk who brags of the first killing gives a false address and vanishes north of the city. Meanwhile Rebus, trying to trace a cache of valuable stolen books, finds himself talking again to the late Elizabeth's coterie of party friends. Rankin creates a living, breathing world in which his weary protagonist tackles his cases while involved in the intricacies of the day-to-day: pints and hangovers, stumbling romance, wet weather, damp clothes, tricky superiors and wide-eyed subordinates. All are brought to bear, yet all are ultimately jettisoned as Rebus closes in on the satisfying solution.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kirkus Reviews
A return to Edinburgh and its sturdy police force, focusing again on Detective Inspector John Rebus (Knobs and Crosses, 1988; Watchman, 1991) as he now tries to solve the murder of Liz Jack- -only child of mogul Sir Hugh Ferrie; wife of respected Member of Parliament Gregor Jack; and, in her well-hidden private life, centerpiece of wild weekends at Deer Lodge, her isolated cottage. Jack himself seemed uninvolved in those activities but had recently been caught in a well-publicized raid on a brothel that--to Rebus, anyway--looked like a set-up. As his superiors try to make a case against a local drifter, Rebus struggles through red herrings, false alibis, secret liaisons, and his own arid emotions until, aided by sharp-eyed sidekick Brian Holmes, he nails his quarry. A solidly absorbing procedural--all enlivened by a succession of offbeat characters and by the author's eccentric but appealing narrative style. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
