Friday, May 20, 2011

Garden, Novels, Inspector, Hanging, Rebus

The Hanging Garden (Inspector Rebus Novels)









Drugs.  Extortion.  Slavery.  Organized crime is fighting for a hold on John Rebus's peaceful Scotland.  And when Rebus rescues a young Bosnian girl forced into prostitution, he breaks a policeman's golden rule to never get personally involved in a case.  Add to that the hunt for an elderly Nazi accused of slaughtering an entire French village, and Rebus wonders just how evil humans can be.  Until his own daughter is mortally injured as a gangland warning for him to back off.  Then even a dedicated cop like Rebus might make a deal with the devil to find the culprit.  Not for justice.  For revenge. 
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 park 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 imprisoned crime boss in a plan to bring Telford down; his continuing battle with drink; the strong possibility that people high up in the British government don't want the old Nazi exposed; danger to Sammy and her journalist lover because of her father's work; and a somewhat strained metaphor of Edinburgh as a new Babylon and you have an admittedly large pot of stew. But Rankin's high art keeps it all bubbling and rich with flavor. Others in the Rebus series include his 1997 Edgar Award-nominated Black and Blue, as well as Hide and Seek, Knots and Crosses, Let It Bleed, Mortal Causes, Strip Jack, and Tooth and Nail. --Dick Adler









List Price: $ 16.99



Price: $ 9.50









Find More Garden Products


Other posts like this, by keyword:

Garden:

A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories (Hb) ...
A Garden For Miss Mouse ...
Dream Plants for the Natural Garden ...
What garden vegetables are useful in the kitchen and the plant doesn’t take up a lot of space? ...
Sierra Leone (Bradt Travel Guide) ...
Backlit Hibiscus at the Atlanta Botanical Garden ...
How to Make Jellies, Jams, and Preserves At Home (Home and Garden Bulletin No. 56) ...
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin Reviews ...
Dealing With Garden Pests — Special Report (Hobby eBook Reports) ...
Cottage Garden in Tissington, Derbyshire ...
Novels:

Romance of the Snob Squad ...
What are similar novels like Perfume and Woman at point zero where the protagonists have the desire to die? ...
What are some adult novels with teen appeal? ...
Are there any good fiction/thrillers/police stories, novels out there? ...
Mr. Cheeters is Missing (Nancy Drew Graphic Novels: Girl Detective #6) ...
Jury Series (Four Complete Novels) ...
Inuyasha, Vol. 35 (Inuyasha (Graphic Novels)) ...
Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories: At Fault / Bayou Folk / A Night in Acadie / The Awakening / Uncollected Stories (Library of Americ ...
Fushigi Yûgi, Vol. 10: Enemy (Fushigi Yugi (Graphic Novels)) (v. 10) ...
Sgt. Frog Volume 19 (Sgt. Frog (Graphic Novels)) Reviews ...
Inspector:

Death of a Hollow Man (The 2nd Inspector Barnaby Mystery) ...
Aftermath: A Novel of Suspense (Inspector Banks Novels) ...
Blackout: An Inspector Espinosa Mystery (Inspector Espinosa Mysteries) ...
This Body of Death: An Inspector Lynley Novel ...
A Corpse in the Koryo (Inspector O Novels) Reviews ...
The Boyhood Days of Guy Fawkes: Or, the Conspirators of Old London (Supernatural and Occult Fiction) Reviews ...
Detective Inspector Huss Reviews ...
The Water’s Edge (Inspector Sejer Mysteries) ...
The Shape of Water (Inspector Montalbano, Book 1) ...
Hanging:

Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories by Ambrose Bierce (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) ...
Killing the Shadows ...
Rebus:

No comments:

Post a Comment