A Heart Full of Headstones: The Gripping New Must-Read Thriller from the No.1 Bestseller Ian Rankin

Product Information

I know I’m getting near the starting point when I’m starting to have wee kind of panicky night sweats and you’re restless in bed.

In fact he was arguing for my next book to be a retrospective back to Rebus as a younger cop, just to delay the inevitable. No sooner have the police arrived and begun questioning residents when another corpse is found, this time in the car park in the boot of the Russian’s Bentley. Small but perfectly formed, The Rise is a great short story perfect to while away a chilly afternoon. 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.After the previous TV show ended, Ian Rankin took back the rights to his books because he was not happy about the inspector being only one hour on the screen. But it’s an odd length, 50 or 60 pages, quite a skinny book, unless it was part of a longer book of short stories. By the end, we know what crime Rebus is accused of committing, but we don’t know the outcome of the trial, and there are still some miscreants who have not been charged.

There are numerous threads featuring characters that fans of Rebus will be familiar with that include, DI Siobhan Clarke, former protege and long time close friend, Malcolm Fox, here working for the Assistant Chief Constable, looking to protect the reputation of Police Scotland. The opening scene has former detective John Rebus in Court, but this time he is in the dock facing a lengthy prison term. My hectic UK tour coincided with a large-scale train strike which made for a few tense days, but it was a great pleasure to share the book with fans and to gauge their eventual reaction to *that* ending. There are secrets buried or so they thought that if they be brought to light more than reputations are at stake.That notion of these big empty glass high rises patrolled by security guards 24/7 but almost nobody living there, I thought was such an interesting location for a murder mystery. He has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year and the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

In fairness, he’s grown into a pantomime villain of a figure who offsets Clarke and Rebus well here. 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 wanted that male/female thing going on with the older guy who feels he is passing the baton on to her, not that she needs him to, so you’ve got that Rebus/Siobhan thing a wee bit. As Edinburgh grapples with COVID, the jury is in a hotel, viewing proceedings via video link; everyone in court is masked, save the Judge and an ailing Rebus, whose mask is in a pocket with his inhaler. I knew I had a victim lying dead on the floor but had a cast of characters, any one of whom could have killed him.But when the young night concierge is found murdered in the building’s lobby, the elite residents quickly find their gilded lifestyles under unwelcome police scrutiny. Set across eight days, with the opening and closing scenes showing John Rebus in the dock, this is a complex plot, with a lot going on.

As well, there are some not unexpected developments in Karen’s personal life, which regular readers will find interesting. I think it’s fair to say that John Hannah isn’t who many people envisage as Rebus but I thought he played the character well anyway and gave quite an in-depth look into Rebus’s inner thoughts and feelings. Now, however, it seems that a new TV show will be in the works, to be aired either next year or the year after. Siobhan meanwhile is working on a case that involves officers at Tynecastle police station long known to be rotten to the core but as yet unproven.Crime boss Big Ger Cafferty continues to make his presence felt, despite being in a wheelchair after being shot, as he asks Rebus to locate a former employee of his, ostensibly so that he can express his remorse. Officer Francis Haggard, who's been at Tynecastle for his entire career, is accused of domestic abuse for beating his wife Cheryl, and there's plenty of proof that Haggard is guilty. Gregor Jack, MP, well-liked, young, married to the fiery Elizabeth - to the outside world a very public success story. It seems, though, that there are only a half dozen people who live in the building, including the owner who lives in the penthouse.