Saturday, December 05, 2020
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin (Orion 2020)
But it wasn’t his need to pee that woke him at 5 a.m. It was a call. He fumbled for both his phone and the bedside lamp, waking Brillo in the process. He couldn’t quite focus on the screen but pressed the phone to his ear anyway.
‘Dad?’ His daughter Samantha’s urgent voice.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, sitting up, growing more awake by the second.
‘Your landline – it’s been cut off.’
‘I meant to tell you about that … '
'About what?’
‘My landline’s not the reason you’re calling at this hour. Is it Carrie?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘What then? Are you all right?’
‘It’s Keith.’
Her partner; Carrie’s father. Rebus swallowed. ‘What’s happened?’ He listened as Samantha began to sob quietly. Her voice cracked when she spoke.
‘He’s gone.’
‘The bastard … ’
‘Not like that … I don’t think so anyway.’ She sniffed. ‘I mean, I don’t really know. He’s disappeared. It’s been two days.’
‘And things were all right at home?’
‘No worse than usual.’
‘But you don’t think he’s just – I don’t know – maybe gone on a bender somewhere?’
‘He’s not like that.’
‘You’ve reported him missing?’
‘They’re sending someone to talk to me.’
‘They probably told you two days isn’t long?’
‘Yes. But his phone just goes to voicemail.’
‘And he didn’t pack a bag or anything?’
‘No. We’ve got a joint bank account – I looked online and he’s not bought anything or taken money out. His car was left in the lay-by near the church.'
Saturday, June 15, 2019
In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2018)
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Ruth and Martin's Album Club by Martin Fitzgerald (Unbound 2017)
Monday, December 05, 2016
Rather the Devil by Ian Rankin (2016)
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Even Dogs In The Wild by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2015)
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2013)
Monday, November 12, 2012
Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2012)
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Doors Open by Ian Rankin (Orion 2008)
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
The Crime Interviews: Volume Two by Len Wanner (Blasted Heath 2012)
When did a book first really mean something to you?
Do you see yourself as a political writer?
Friday, November 11, 2011
I bloody knew it!
From a New Zealand newspaper's Q & A with Ian Rankin, who's currently bigging up the excellent 'The Impossible Dead':
The book that changed me is... Laidlaw by William McIlvanney. I read this in the early 1980s when I was a student but also trying to become a published novelist. It's beautifully written, with taut plotting and a clean style. Laidlaw made me think I could maybe write my own crime fiction.
It has to be said . . . Morris Cafferty is no John Rhodes.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin (Orion Books 2011)
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‘One or two are probably still a bit cracked – living as hermits in the Western Isles and writing anarchist blogs. Most of them probably found that as they got older, they became the sort of person they’d previously despised.’
‘The establishment, in other words?’
‘These were bright people, in the main.’
‘Even the ones scooping up handfuls of anthrax from Gruinard?’
‘Even them,’ Professor Martin said, sounding sleepy from all the wine. ‘It’s all changed now, though, hasn’t it? Nationalism has entered the mainstream. If you ask me, they’ll sweep the next election. A few years from now, we could be living in an independent European democracy. No Queen, no Westminster, no nuclear deterrent. That would have been impossible to predict a scant few years back, never mind quarter of a century.’
‘Pretty much what the SNLA and all the others were fighting for,’ Fox concurred.
‘Pretty much.’
‘Is there anyone I could try talking to about all of this, other than psychiatric patients and hermits?’
‘Do you know John Elliot?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He’s on TV all the time. News and current affairs.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He merits a mention in my book.’
‘What about Alice Watts?’
‘Who?’
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Browned off
Not surprised to see Ian Rankin's name so high up the list if last year's Dunfermline charity shops are anything to go by. The question is, do people actually read the books that they eventually palm off to charity shops?
The author and/or book that always seems to be in abundance at thrift shop sales, stoop sales and library fund raisers in Brooklyn? Step forward Ian McEwan's 2001 novel, 'Atonement'. If I had a dollar for every time that unbroken spine stared back at me at a book sale, I could afford a kindle . . . and afford to put a few books on the kindle.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
A Question of Blood by Ian Rankin (Back Bay Books 2003)
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"Well, James?" the lawyer said. "What do you think?"
The teenager seemed to be considering the offer. He returned his father's stare as if it were all the nourishment he needed and he had a hunger that would never be stilled.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Strip Jack by Ian Rankin (Minotaur Books 1992)
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'No, sir, I'm a police inspector.'
'Oh.' His face dulled a little. 'I thought maybe you'd come to . . . they don't treat us well here, you know.' He paused. 'There, because I've told you that I'll probably be disciplined, maybe even put into solitary. Everything, any dissension, gets reported back. But I've got to keep telling people, or nothing will be done. I have some influential friends, Inspector.' Rebus thought this was for the nurse's ears more than his own. 'Friends in high places . . .'
Well, Dr Forster knew that now, thanks to Rebus.
' . . . friends I can trust. People need to be told, you see. They censor our mail. They decide what we can read. They won't even let me read Das Kapital. And they give us drugs. The mentally ill, you know, by whom I mean those who have been judged to be mentally ill, we have less rights than the most hardened mass murderer . . . hardened but sane mass murderer. Is that fair? Is that . . . humane?'
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Complaints by Ian Rankin (Orion 2009)
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Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Paperbacks 1990)
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Rebus had made the mistake of reading too much into the situation, all along. He had blurred the picture himself, seeing connections where there were none, seeing plot and conspiracy where none existed. The real plot was so much bigger, the size of a haystack to his needle.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Paperbacks 1996)
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"Mr. Haldayne has a point, Inspector." Mathieson was sitting down again, in his big Chief Executive chair at the end of the table. Tables without corners were supposed to make everyone equal, but Mathieson's chair was a leather throne. He looked and sounded completely unruffled by events thus far, while Rebus felt his head would explode.
Hundreds of jobs . . . spin-offs . . . happy, smiling faces. People like Salty Dougary, pride restored, given another chance. Did Rebus have the gall to think he could pronounce sentence on the future of people like that? People who wouldn't care who got away with what, so long as they had a paycheck at the end of the month?
Gillespie had died, but Rebus knew these men hadn't killed him, not directly. At the same time he hated them, hated their confidence and their indifference, hated their certainty that what they did was "for the good." They knew the way the world worked; they knew who - or, rather, what - was in charge. It wasn't anyone stupid enough to place themselves in the front line. It was secret quiet men who got on with their work the world over, bribing where necessary, breaking the rules, but quietly, in the name of progress, in the name of the system.
Shug McAnally was dead, but no one was grieving: Tresa was spending his money, and having a good time with Maisie Finch. Audrey Gillespie, too, might start enjoying life for the first time in years, maybe with her lover. A man had died - cruelly and in terror - but he was all there was on Rebus's side of the balance sheet. And on the other . . . everything else.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Press 1998)
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