Rather Be The Devil

   

    Mr. Cornflower writes:

    John Rebus, the detective hero of Ian Rankin’s seamy Edinburgh, had to retire one day; Rankin has been writing about him in real time for nearly thirty years. But like his alter ego, the gangster Big Ger Cafferty, he won’t give up and let go. Brought back by his old colleagues to help with a case involving Cafferty and with deep, dark roots in the city’s past, Rebus steers his usual driven course to the truth, along a line set not by rules and procedures but by his instinct for trouble and his view of justice.

    Like every first rate writer of detective fiction, Rankin has not only compelling protagonists in Rebus and Cafferty but a rich gallery of supporting characters: Rebus’s ex-colleagues Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox; the up and coming prince of the Edinburgh underworld, Darryl Christie, a chillingly composed young man who approaches crime with the zeal of a Scottish accountant tackling a complicated audit; and the long dead Maria Turquand, promiscuous wife of one of the city’s leading financiers. And he also has that other marker of quality, a wonderfully evocative sense of place and setting, exploiting to the full the theatrical contrasts which Edinburgh offers, between the complacent bourgeois mansions of Inverleith and Merchiston where Christie and Cafferty have installed themselves, and the low dives of the Cowgate and the grim warrens of Craigmillar. Best of all, Rankin has mischievously deprived Rebus of drink and tobacco - “doctor’s orders” - so let’s hope he still has more stories to tell.

    Rather Be The Devil is the 21st. Rebus book and is well up with the best of them.

    Here's the author himself to tell you more.

Comments

[Liz Davey]

Currently reading and enjoying!

[Cornflower]

Very good!