Emad Akhtar, publisher at Orion, told The Scotsman: “A new novel from the iconic Ian Rankin and his much-beloved creation John Rebus is a reading highlight in every book lover’s year.

Book 24. Will there be a Book 25? I really don’t know. This book didn’t finish at all how I thought it would, even though I did catch my breath - literally - at a particularly pivotal moment (no spoilers!). I thought that was it, but it seems there is still enough bluster and doggedness in John Rebus for the series to continue. I’d like to think so anyway. Fingers crossed. I’ve been anxious when reading the last few books, wondering how they would end, as this series has been such an important part of my reading life. Huge. I even had a friend take a foto of the infamous Oxford Bar when they were in Edinburgh. Wherever Ian Rankin, and John Rebus end up taking me, I’m now ok with that. Cheers to them both. And a scratch and belly rub for Brillo. Rankin has used a common literary device where he starts the story near what is probably the end of the story. In the opening paragraphs John Rebus is in court on trial for an unknown offence. It whets the appetite of the reader to continue to read to discover why this antihero has finally being prosecuted. We know he bends the rules but, this time has he broken the rules? I am not sure if this hook is necessary in a Rebus’ novel.

Hungry for more new 2022 books?

Like all pandemics, there are those that succumb, those that struggle through, and those that seek to profit, in this case by “Furlough Fraud”. No shortage of slippery characters here: a well-connected land developer, a lettings agency once owned by “Big Ger” and tenuous links from there to a man “Big Ger” reputedly had eliminated. His new henchman, Andrew, was at one time employed by underworld figure Darryl Christie, currently serving a 25 year sentence. Aside from the edgy humour, the author drops in descriptions of the city itself. I’ve enjoyed the recent crime fiction coming from Australia: books by Jane Harper, Chris Hammer and Hayley Scrivenor. My favourite of their detectives is Hammer’s Nell Buchanan. She first appears in Opal Country as an inexperienced young investigator supporting homicide detective Ivan Lucic in the remote mining badlands. She comes into her own in Dead Man’s Creek, a richly textured novel in which events of the past play out in the present in the place where Nell grew up. There is one scene where Rebus leaves Siobhan Clarke and as he walks away, she observes a weathered stooped, old man. She reflects on how once he was a figure of strength, feared by many. It was a sad poignant point in the story. It was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with Miss Marple. She is one of the great unsung heroines of literature: principled, resolute, courageous, a rare older woman in fiction who is there on her own terms, rather than as someone’s mother or grandmother. She first appeared in a short story published in 1927, The Tuesday Night Club, and 12 full-length novels followed, including the brilliant Sleeping Murder – published posthumously, but written during the second world war and kept in a vault.

He's long retired by now, and ailing, but he still wants to put away bad guys (or help Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke put them away). This time, ostensibly doing a favor for his long-term nemesis Morris "Big Ger" Cafferty, Rebus goes looking for a man once in Cafferty's employ, missing and presumed dead. This bit of unofficial sleuthing collides with a real case that Clarke is investigating: a policeman from the Tynecastle station who is abusing his wife, then disappears. As a self-taught detective, Freddy makes some ludicrous missteps, but it’s part of his charm that he can laugh at himself. In the book’s climactic scene, a trial in the barn with the rooster as judge, Freddy gets the cat off a murder rap with some impressive deductions, and crucial evidence that the mice help gather. Rebus could still hear singing coming from the Meadows, and a dog barking, and a distant siren. Somewhere, someone needed help. Somewhere, bad things were happening. He’d spent his whole life in that world, a city perpetually dark, feeling increasingly weighed down, his heart full of headstones.

THE WORLD OF IAN RANKIN

Rebus shares top billing this time with Siobhan Clarke, the eager Detective Inspector who has been his long time friend. Clarke is investigating the murder of an ex-policeman who had been threatening to blow the gaff on the goings on at the notorious Tynecastle Station. There are plenty of cops who’d rather this didn’t happen, so there are suspects aplenty. Even Rebus himself seems to be somewhat tainted by historic association with the one time leader of the motley station crew. William McIlvanney is widely credited as the founder of the Tartan Noir movement that includes authors such as Denise Mina, Ian Banks, and Val McDermid, all of whom cite him as an influence and inspiration. McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy “changed the face of Scottish fiction” ( The Times of London), his Docherty won the Whitbread Award for Fiction, and his Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch both gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association. Strange Loyalties won the Glasgow Herald’s People’s Prize. William passed away in December 2015. However, great news for Rankin fans as the 61-year-old has emerged from retirement to work on a series of subsequent bases, with the most recent story taking him to the north of mainland Scotland, where his daughter Samantha has been living. Meanwhile, 2022 marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of the first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, with the series seemingly reaching an end with the novel Exit Music in 2007. A couple of my recent fiction reads have included the effect of COVID at the time. Rebus has a lanyard that excuses him from wearing a mask. I wonder how long it will be before a writer centres a crime around the conditions that COVID created?