| Product: |
Naming of the Dead - Ian Rankin |
| Date: |
25/08/07 (80 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: is pretty accurate, and well written as always
Disadvantages: some leaps in the investigation
This book I bought for more personal reasons than the usual 'it just jumped in to the basket, Dad, honest' excuse I give when my Dad spots yet more books migrating on to the already groaning book cases in my room. My reasons simply were that as well as enjoying the other books which feature Rebus, during the period of time this book was set I was living in Stirling and working near the location of the G8 summit and Gleneagles during the day and in the City Centre at night. So my experiences of seeing the marchers, small scale riots, Protesters Camps and getting stuck in road blocks meant this book would either confirm my suspicsions about Ian Rankin's eye for detail and 'historical' accuracy or blow my belief by proving it to be all lies.
So going back to the plot, Rebus as we all know is getting on in years and beginning to quite look forward to his retirement but with his tenacity and still evident enjoyment of parts of his job he is unwilling to just sit back and coast through his final years in the force.
But some how he has been left excluded from the teams detailled with extra duties surrounding the Summit itself instead being left with a light caseload in the hopes of keeping him out of trouble while the dignitaries are in the country. But this is Rebus and we know that he is almost incapable of doing what his superiors expect him to do.
He has been given a case in which a known rapist has been murdered, but because of the victims past noone is overly concerned about his lack of a future, except that is Rebus, who despite not being the lead on the case (the honour of which has been handed to Siobhan Clarke his DS) manages to upset the head of a London based police group and several foreign dignitaries as he finds that apparently this murder is not an isolated case, but two other recently released offenders have been killed. Even worse as far as the Lothian Police are concerned evidence has been found just a few miles from Gleneagles much to close for them to be happy about the investigation to be going on.
Also a young Government Minister has died, tumbling from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle during a dinner held there, the general consensus is that Ben Webster jumped or fell but Rebus believes he may have been pushed, and adds this to his list of things to be finding out.
As I said earlier at the time of the Gleneagles summit I was in Stirling and was affected by several things, one most notably was that while I was travelling back in to town after work one evening we passed the Springkerse as the protesters were attacking the Retail park, the details Rankin includes about the area and damages they caused are accurate, and match closely with my own experiences, which is in my opinion quite rare, since authors have a habit of manipulating time scales and facts to fit their story rather than fitting their story to the facts!
There are several amusing scenes when Rebus and Siobahn are at Gleneagles and Siobhan is left asking 'Did we cause that?' about a now famous incident involving a man and a bicycle.
Though not the best Rebus book I have read it certainly ranks highly, as with several of Rebus' investigations you are left wondering why he has not been disciplined over some of his actions and feeling rather sorry for Siobahn as undoubtedly her career could be affected by Rebus dragging her down the wrong investigative path.
At 515 pages long it is quite a long book but I personally didnt feel that it was overly long, maybe that was because I was enjoying the story or because I was waiting for another section which I could analyse for accuracy regarding the events in Stirling its hard to say since I will admit that this has left me slightly biased, though I could just as easily have been disappointed by the way it was written about.
The cheapest online retailler for this title is play.com though it is as usual avaliable on amazons marketplace for slightly less, I bought it from Asda in the 3 for £10 offer.
Summary: Rebus and DS Clarke try to survive the G8
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