- Children
- Smethurst, William
- C
- Tropical Diseases
- Theoretical Physics
- General AAS
- Miller, Isabel
- World War I
- Atwood, Margaret
- By Series
- MacDonald, Patricia J.
- G
- Europe
- Constitutional
- 16th to 18th Century
- Engineering Physics
- Peninsular War
- Warner, Alan
- Dictionaries
- Crews, Harry
- McDermid, Val
- Audio CDs
- Family
- Bali
- Secret Societies
- Watches
- Home and Garden
- UK Electronics
- UK Books
- Health and Personal Care
- UK Sporting Goods
- Clothing, Shoes and Accessories
- Electronics, Gadgets and Computers
- CDs and Music Downloads
- UK Software and Video Games
- UK Toys and Games
- UK Home and Garden
- UK Video Games
- UK Baby Clothes and Accessories
- Books On
- German Electronics
Books : Fiction : Authors, A-Z : R : Rankin, Ian
-
Seemingly banal dinner-party chat reveals strange tales of the guests' dodgy pasts and unreliable futures. Symposium is Muriel Spark at her wicked best.
-
Presents a set of stories.
-
Features three interlinking stories about Edinburgh. This book presents three writers' radically different takes on Edinburgh life - a social mix that ranges from Welsh's Leith junkies to McCall Smith's New Town haute bourgeoisie.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
FEATURING AN EXCLUSIVE INTRODUCTION READ BY IAN RANKIN. The 5th Inspector Rebus novel from the award-winning No.1 bestselling author.
-
Two Great Novels - Let it bleed and Black and Blue, A bumper Omnibus Edition
-
-
-
-
-
-
Ian Rankin's ninth book about Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh police is so full of story that it seems about to explode into shapeless anarchy at any moment. What keeps it from doing so is Rankin's strong heart and even stronger writing skills. When a Bosnian prostitute refuses to testify against a crime boss who has threatened her family, he says this about the cops trying to pressure her: "Silence in the room. They were all looking at her. Four men, men with jobs, family ties, men with lives of their own. In the scheme of things, they seldom realised how well off they were. And now they realised something else: how helpless they were."
Rebus is trying to help the young woman--renamed Candice by the young, slick, brutal thug Tommy Telford, who is into everything from drugs and prostitution to aiding a Japanese business syndicate in acquiring a local golf course-- because she's about the same age and physical aspect as his own daughter, Sammy. He's also conducting the investigation of a suspected Nazi war criminal, an old man who spends his time tending graves in Warriston cemetery. "A cemetery should have been about death, but Warriston didn't feel that way to Rebus. Much of it resembled a rambling ark into which some statuary had been dropped," Rankin writes with the icy clarity of cold water over stone.
Add to this Rebus's involvement with an
-
Beggars Banquet is something of a departure for Ian Rankin and a very welcome one. Over the years, Rankin has built up an imposing portfolio of short stories. Appearing in crime magazines, written for personal appearances, or as one-off radio specials, they all resound with the singular energy and idiosyncratic characterisation of his best full-length novels. A previous collection, A Good Hanging, combined some first-rate tales with more workaday material, but this time round there isn't a single weak link, and the range of stories here is astonishing; this is a panoply of Rankin's approach to crime and mystery writing, and is that rare thing in short story collections: a book in which the tales can be read one after the other with ever-increasing pleasure.We are taken into territory that is horrific (The Hanged Man), grimly ironic (The Only True Comedian) and even sociological (Glimmer is a hard-edged picture of how the optimism and hedonism of the 60's was swiftly eroded). And who could resist lines such as the following (in Unknown Pleasures):
He could feel the sweat, even though it was more viscous than sweat… more like a sheen of cooking oil. The tenement stairwell smelt of deep-fried tomcat…
But perhaps you're the kind of reader who fights shy of short story collections? Well, if you're any kind of a DI Rebus fan (and what crime enthusiast isn't?), there are eight--count them--eight stories featuring our favourite Scottish copper. And who could say no to a collection so rich in Rebus? --Barry Forshaw