Saints of the Shadow Bible

Starred review from December 23, 2013
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 demotionâfrom detective inspector to detective sergeantânot 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. 8-city author tour.

January 15, 2014
Rebus is working the streets as a detective again--and his loyalty is on the line. When John Rebus left retirement to rejoin the Edinburgh police force, he had to take the reduced rank of detective sergeant. Siobhan Clarke, his former junior partner, is now a detective inspector and theoretically his boss in the investigation of the road accident of Jessica Traynor, a young art student. The two coppers suspect that Jessica's boyfriend, son of Justice Minister Patrick McCuskey, was driving the car and fled the scene. While Rebus is on the Traynor case and the subsequent murder of McCuskey, Malcolm Fox of Complaints is investigating Rebus and the surviving members of the Saints of the Shadow Bible, a police division that disbanded years ago. Rebus, who was only a detective constable back then, had little to do with Billy Saunders, the snitch who killed a man and walked, most likely thank to his usefulness to the Saints. Thirty years later, the snitch disappears, and Rebus must choose whether to back up his former mates while he pursues the crisscrossing mysteries. Although Rebus (Standing in Another Man's Grave, 2013, etc.) is the protagonist of this gritty procedural, you see the action through so many other eyes that the hard-living detective is less vivid a presence than in his earlier outings. But the most persistent cop in the shop will still do whatever it takes to crack a case.

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