Review by New York Times Review
JOHN REBUS is a downbeat version of his younger, scrappier self in RATHER BE THE DEVIL (Little, Brown, $27), the latest entry in Ian Rankin's endlessly evolving series of Edinburgh police procedurals. Now retired from the force and hacking up his lungs with bronchitis or worse, the former homicide detective has gone a whole week without cigarettes. But every retired man needs a hobby, and for Rebus it's brooding over unsolved cases like the 1978 murder of Maria Turquand, who was strangled at the venerable Caledonian Hotel while a party of rock musicians and their groupies was raging in the next room. And when the detective on that cold case is fished out of the harbor, the investigations intersect. Rankin is an expert at manipulating multiple plots. Here they involve touchy gang chieftains itching for war, equally quarrelsome police officials squabbling over jurisdiction and one especially "ruthless, rapacious, hands-on, determined" banker trafficking in fishy offshore shell companies. Rebus's dealings with some of these players go way back, like his ambiguous relationship with Big Ger Cafferty, a criminal kingpin with whom he shares the uneasy bond of surrogate father and rebellious son. Because he's cruel as well as cunning, Cafferty's weapons of choice are a claw hammer and a bag of nails. Rebus himself is brash and blunt: "With me, it's always been about the outcome rather than the process." The rumors of these two sipping strong brews together at Starbucks might even be true. Along with his plotting prowess, Rankin has cultivated a fluid style that accommodates mordant cop talk, coarse gangster lingo and the occasional honest expression of compassion. So there's a certain rough charm to the banter between Rebus and his welldrawn colleagues. In one scene, a man charged with breaking the news of a fellow officer's death to his longtime girlfriend asks what he knows is a foolish question ("You going to be O.K.?") and accepts her response ("Not for a long time") with due respect for its sad, cold truth. BY INJECTING A SPRITZ of supernatural fizz into BEHIND HER EYES (Flatiron, $25.99), Sarah Pinborough shrewdly transforms a romantic suspense novel into an eerie thriller calculated to creep you out. The premise of the triangular romance at the heart of the story is wryly stated by Louise Barnsley: "Woman walks into a bar and is sweet-talked by the man of her dreams, who turns out to be her new boss." It's awkward enough the next morning, when Louise comes face to face with David Martin, the psychiatrist who hired her (sight unseen) as his secretary. But matters get even stickier when she finds herself drawn to David's gorgeous but browbeaten wife, Adele. The women become fast friends, bonding over gym classes and coffee dates while keeping their relationship secret from David. Lovesick Louise wants him to continue his secret visits to her bed, while Adele is so addled by the drugs her husband feeds her that she hasn't the will to break out of her bondage. In brief chapters with alternating narrators, Pinborough keeps us guessing about just who's manipulating whom - until the ending reveals that we've been wholly complicit in this terrifying mind game. I HEREBY CROWN Reed Farrel Coleman the king of Long Island noir for his wonderfully raw novels featuring Gus Murphy, an ex-cop who works security for the Paragon Hotel but mostly chauffeurs guests to and from MacArthur Airport. "Night work at the Paragon was for people with secrets and stories not to tell," Gus informs us in WHAT YOU BREAK (Putnam, $27), which finds the morose house dick putting his life on the line for his friend Slava, the burly bellman "who worked nights because the dark helped hide his past." When Slava realizes his sins have outpaced him ("I am shamed in my soul"), he goes into hiding, even from Gus, who's determined to stand by him. Coleman takes us on a native Long Islander's tour of Suffolk County, from a strip-mall deli with "drying salamis hanging like red wind chimes" to a Friday night at the Full Flaps Lounge. He's especially astute about the social divisions between the North and South Shores and the barriers that protect people who live in places like Shelter Island from people who gravitate to depressing places like the Paragon. SOME WRITERS FEEL compelled to drag the personal lives of their sleuths into every story. In Mark Kline's translation of THE LOST WOMAN (Grand Central, $26), the Danish author Sara Blaedel piles the misery on Louise Rick, the highly competent but longsuffering Copenhagen police officer who acts as her series sleuth. Rick panics when Eik Nordstrom, her professional colleague and live-in lover, turns up in an English jail after crashing an investigation into the murder of Sofie Bygmann, a woman he once loved and lost. This rather awkward buildup eventually leads to the point of the story: "the dilemma surrounding a person's right to decide when he or she would die." After running away from Eik all those years ago, Sofie volunteered at a hospice in Zurich that performs assisted suicides (except they call it a "free death"). Although 70 percent of Danes support euthanasia, it's illegal in their country, which drives the narrative into that gray territory where compassion can become a crime and kindness can lead to coldblooded murder.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* It's a setup as old as the genre: an unofficial sleuth keeps butting in on a police investigation while the coppers get increasingly pissed. But give the setup a quarter turn to the left, and make the sleuth not some blueberry muffin-baking amateur but John Rebus, the legendary but now retired Edinburgh detective, and you have a very different situation. Rankin has been improvising on this theme ever since he wisely decided to reinvent the Rebus series after the curmudgeonly detective turned in his shield (Exit Music, 2008). This time the spur in Rebus' saddle comes from his recollection of an unsolved murder (promiscuous society lady killed in fancy hotel, possibly by a gangster); intrigued and needing something to do, Rebus begins to walk back the case, but soon enough he's strolled into a mess of trouble involving turf battles both within the police and among Scotland's reigning crime lords. There's lots of juicy interplay between outsider Rebus and his successors, Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox, but best of all, there's the re-emergence of another character on whom the mantle of retirement is sitting awkwardly: Big Ger Cafferty, former crime boss and Rebus' longtime frenemy. The ongoing pas de deux between these two aging antiheroes has been one of the best things in crime fiction for years, but Rankin kicks it up several notches here, with both men facing mortality and screaming in two-part harmony against the dying of the light.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A 1978 cold case brings John Rebus out of semiretirement in Edgar-finalist Rankin's complex 23rd novel featuring the Edinburgh copper (after 2015's Even Dogs in the Wild). Crabby from giving up cigarettes and more afraid than he would like to admit about impending medical results, Rebus reexamines the unsolved murder of Maria Turquand, the wife of a wealthy banker with a penchant for sleeping around, at Edinburgh's classy Caledonian hotel. Meanwhile, Det. Insp. Siobahn Clarke has her hands full with the beating of gangster Darryl Christie, who swears his injuries came at the behest of one of the city's biggest crime bosses, Big Ger Cafferty, who just happens to be Rebus's nemesis cum confidante. Det. Insp. Malcolm Fox, on loan from Police Scotland, looks into possible money laundering schemes involving not only Christie but also the heir to the banking fortune that made the Turquands millionaires back in the '70s. With its trademark blend of sharp wit and even sharper police work, this entry is yet another example of why Rankin remains in the top echelon of Scottish crime writers. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Reluctantly retired DI John Rebus may have given up smoking and drinking but proves himself incapable of resisting a crime that has long gone cold. Enjoying dinner at Edinburgh's old Caledonian Hotel, he is reminded that it was the scene of the 1978 murder of socialite Maria Turquand. Able to access the case files via his former colleague DS Siobhan Clarke, Rebus begins to track down connected witnesses, suspects, and coppers. The heat is turned up when Robert Chatham, a former cold case detective, ends up dead soon after talking with Rebus. Meanwhile, returning characters Malcom Fox and Clarke are forced to coordinate cases of assault and money laundering in connection to rising crime boss Darryl Christie. Rebus, Clarke, and Fox find they must work together to try to sort out various cases that are becoming increasingly intertwined. Rankin fans will cheer the return of their favorite characters in this gritty, dark, and page-turning crime novel. Verdict This may be the author's (Even Dogs in the Wild) 21st series outing, but the thrill is still fresh. Fans may be more comfortable with the myriad backstories and established characters, but newcomers can still appreciate this entry. For readers who like police procedurals such as Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. [See Prepub Alert, 7/25/16.]-Susan Santa, Shelter Rock P.L., Albertson, NY © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
