Saints of the Shadow Bible Author: Visit Amazon's Ian Rankin Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0316224553 | Format: EPUB
Saints of the Shadow Bible Description
Review
''[Rebus] is a superbly drawn character, matched by the edgy authenticity of the Scottish locale and dialogue.'' --Sunday Times (London), praise for the series
''John Rebus comes out of retirement in Edgar-winner Rankin's stellar 20th novel featuring the Edinburgh cop (after 2013's
Standing in Another Man's Grave). Rebus, though, must accept a demotion from detective inspector to detective sergeant not that he cares about rank. It's the case that counts, which in this entry involves ''conspiracies, connections and coincidences.'' Malcolm Fox, the officer in charge of the Complaints department (the Scottish version of Internal Affairs), leads an investigation into whether a fast and loose group of cops in the mid-1980s known as the Saints of the Shadow Bible might have tainted a murder trial back when Rebus was a young officer. Rankin deftly ties the old case into a fresh one that begins with a seemingly routine car accident involving the daughter of a powerful businessman that soon expands to involve the suspicious death of the public face of the Scottish nationalist movement. The immense and intricate canvas includes dozens of characters, plots within plots, and multiple themes, from Scottish independence to the insidiousness of corruption, public and private. Too much may be going on at times for some readers, but distinctive characters (including Edinburgh itself) make the book memorable. 'The good guys are never all good and the bad ones never all bad,' says Rebus, and that certainly applies to Rebus himself, willful, determined, and droll.'' --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
''A novel densely packed with incident and intrigue, and Rankin's thriller plotting is sublime as ever.'' --Independent (London)
''Set against the campaigns in the run-up to the referendum on Scottish independence, it is a fascinating exploration of ideas of loyalty and allegiance in a changing world, as well as a welcome return for a battered but tenacious survivor.'' --Guardian (London)
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
About the Author
Ian Rankin is a #1 international bestselling author. Winner of an Edgar Award and the recipient of a Gold Dagger for fiction and the Chandler-Fulbright Award, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.
- Series: Inspector Rebus
- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (January 14, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0316224553
- ISBN-13: 978-0316224550
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
When the 'double jeopardy' law is relaxed, the Solicitor General asks Malcolm Fox to reinvestigate a case from the '80s, one involving a young DC Rebus. It had been thought at the time that the officers of Summerhall had tampered with the evidence to allow a murderer to go free - a murderer who also happened to be an informer to the head of the Summerhall team. Meantime, in the present day, Siobhan Clarke and Rebus are back working as a team. With the new rules on retirement age, Rebus has been taken back into CID but has had to take a downgrading to Detective Sergeant, meaning Siobhan now outranks him. They are called out to what looks at first like a straightforward road accident, but a couple of things about the scene make them suspect there may be more to it than that.
When I try to pin down why Rankin is head and shoulders above most crime writers, it really comes down to two things. Firstly, the quality of his writing never wavers - he knows how to tell a good story, his pacing is superb and his plots are always both complex and believable. His characterisation is second to none - Rebus and Clarke have been real people to us for years now, people we feel we know, and Fox is rapidly joining them as just as important a character. They don't perform superhuman feats, nor does every book end with them being saved from hideous danger. There is a realism that makes us believe this is how the police really work - we've even seen Rebus over the years learning to toe the line as the Police Force has tightened up on mavericks and corruption in real life.
Secondly, Rankin has his finger on the political pulse of Scotland - his books always relate to the main concerns of the day, without ever obsessing about them and without ever taking a stance.
Ian Rankin is a top British crime writer and this is #19 in the extremely successful Inspector Rebus series. Recently I have read a lot of books by popular authors who try to put new life into a series that should be running out of steam. With this book Rankin is doing the same by taking us back to the John Rebus's early days in the police force and reviewing what he really is and what he has become.
John Rebus is back in the force which is his only life. The only way at his age he can continue to work in the force is to take a demotion to Detective Sergeant and he is now working for his old protegé Detective Inspector Siobhan (pronounced shiv-on) Clarke. Their first case together is a car crash where the daughter of an important London businessman is badly injured in a single driver car crash. What is strange is that her seat belt is unbuckled and one of her shoes finished up under the passenger seat, suggesting that someone else was driving and had moved her into the driving seat to cover up his part in the crash. Her boyfriend happens to be the son of Pat McCuskey, the Scottish Justice Minister and a top protagonist in favour of an independent Scotland.
At the same time DI Malcolm Fox of the Complaints Division (their Internal Affairs) is looking at a 30 year old case that involved the detectives at the Summerhall Police Station who were well known for keeping down the crime rate by doing things their way and sometimes bending the law to do this. Rebus was a raw Detective Constable at the time and was recruited to become one of the "Saints of the Shadow Bible" who swore to uphold their own policing standards. Rebus admits that at times he did a few things he now regrets but he was never knowingly involved in really bad things.
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