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    The Black Book: An Inspector Rebus Mystery
    The Black Book: An Inspector Rebus Mystery
    The Black Book: An Inspector Rebus Mystery
    Ebook399 pages6 hours

    The Black Book: An Inspector Rebus Mystery

    By Ian Rankin

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The fifth novel featuring Inspector John Rebus, available for the first time as an e-book and with an exclusive introduction by author Ian Rankin.

    When the Central Hotel, a place of decidedly unsavory reputation, burned to the ground in a mysterious fire, the Edinburgh police were unable to disguise their delight. That is, until a body was found in the still-smoldering ashes, charred beyond all identification but with a bullet lodged in its skull. Now it's five years later and Inspector John Rebus is following any leads in a vicious off-duty ambush that has put one of his favorite junior officers into a coma.

    A cheap black notebook belonging to the wounded policeman contains a cryptic allusion to the almost-forgotten blaze, but crucial pieces of the puzzle obstinately refuse to fall into place. What could young Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes have learned to render him such a threat that he must be silenced at all costs? "The past is important," Rebus hardly needs to remind himself, yet the secrets he persists in uncovering are buried in layer upon layer of sordid and evil lies.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateMar 22, 2011
    ISBN9781451649130
    The Black Book: An Inspector Rebus Mystery
    Author

    Ian Rankin

    Ian Rankin is the worldwide #1 bestselling writer of the Inspector Rebus books, including Knots and Crosses, Let It Bleed, Black and Blue, Set in Darkness, Resurrection Men, A Question of Blood, The Falls and Exit Music. He is also the author of The Complaints and Doors Open. He has won an Edgar Award, a Gold Dagger for fiction, a Diamond Dagger for career excellence, and the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his contributions to literature. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.

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    Reviews for The Black Book

    4/5

    445 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Inspector Rebus is working on a big case involving a crime boss who has slipped through the Edinburgh policeman's fingers before. Rebus has little faith that this will be the time, yet he badly wants to put this particular criminal away. At the same time, Rebus begins to work a five year old case, that of a hotel fire in which a charred body was found but never identified. To make things worse, Rebus' girlfriend kicks him out and his younger brother shows up needing a place to stay.
    • 4/5
      Synopsis: John Rebus has been kicked out of his girlfriend's house and is back living among his renters. His brother arrives from prison and also lives in this milieu. Rebus's partner, Brian, is attacked and remained in a coma but Rebus finds Brian's black book and has to decipher the cryptic notes to determine what case Brian was following. This thread leads Remus to hunt for one of his enemies and also to solve an old murder and arson case.Review: Well written, this book is a bit depressing in that Remus continues to have difficulty with his personal life. The old murder is a convoluted tale that borders on the unbelievable.
    • 4/5
      If you have not read a John Rebus book, and if you like hard-hitting, fast-paced British mysteries, then you have a treat in store for you. I highly recommend Edinburgh's Dick Tracy (DI John Rebus). This is the fifth book in this series, and as always it's best to start at the beginning, but if you don't and start with this book that's OK too. Rebus has morphed by this book. He is a really strong character with the tenacity of a bloodhound when he's on the hunt. When a close colleague is mugged in an alley, Rebus is drawn into a case that began five years ago when a famous hotel burned to the ground. When the smoke cleared a body with a bullet hole in his head is found. The body has not been identified by the time Rebus gets on the case. With the help of his new DC Siobhan Clarke, they try to bring down a huge crime ring that has been terrorizing Edinburgh for ages. This is an intelligently written, hard-hitting, tightly written book that kept me turning pages.
    • 5/5
      The Black Book is another great installment in the Rebus series. Dry humour, intriguing characters, excellent plot and the fine atmosphere of life in Scotland. This book does not disappoint. Looking forward to my next visit with Rebus.
    • 4/5
      The Black Book by Ian Rankin - Good

      I hadn't intended to read this. It came as part of a trilogy that I intend to use in my August BX release challenge. But it is also the book I thought I'd started when I read "Let it Bleed" (DRM breaking mix up which put the wrong book in the title on my kindle) so despite going back in the the Rebus timeline, I decided to give it a whirl before releasing to the world.

      To be fair, pretty standard Rebus stuff. He gets himself drawn into something, upsets a lot of people and finally comes good. The big plus point for me is this is the Edinburgh I know as it's set in 1993, a couple of years after I moved here, so the sights and sounds (and smells) are all ones I remember. I also remember the suspicious hotel fire that the author used as the initial idea for the story (no body in the real fire tho!). That all adds to it for me.

      Basically another paced crime story - if you like Rebus books, you'll like it, if not, well.....
    • 4/5
      Rebus is a strong character and it is the interest the reader has in him rather than the routine story that keeps you turning the pages.
    • 4/5
      I'm trying this year to read all the Ian Rankin books on my bookshelf. I kept buying them as I saw them but I wanted to wait until I had all the Rebus books so I could read them in order. I have had them all for a while but there are so many other books to read that I kept putting it off. Also, there's that part of me that knows that once I read them I won't have any more stockpiled unless Ian Rankin writes another Rebus. I keep hoping. At the start of this book Rebus is actually not alone having moved in with Dr. Patience Aitken and rented his apartment to students. However, after spending one too many evenings away from home Patience locks John out so he has to go sleep on the couch in his own apartment. His brother, Michael, has just gotten out of jail and is also staying in the apartment. Rebus calls his life a black comedy but there is nothing funny about his sidekick DS Brian Holmes getting knocked on the head and staying in a coma for days. Holmes may have been targeted because of an old case he was looking into so, of course, Rebus starts looking into it as well. Five years before the Central Hotel burned down and a body was found in the ashes. It wasn't someone who perished in the fire. The body had a bullet wound through the heart and was dead before the fire started. The victim has never been identified nor has the killer. This investigation is not sanctioned by the police brass but that has never bothered John Rebus. His team is supposed to be helping in another operation to try taking down some money lenders. Big Ger Cafferty may be involved which is interesting to Rebus but he doesn't hold out much hope of actually getting a conviction. So it is Siobhan Clarke who is putting most of the time on surveillance while Rebus follows his hunches about the old case. Things get a little personal when his brother is abducted and hung upside down from a rail bridge. Michael was not physically hurt but he is mentally bruised and battered and John is worried about him. Rebus even goes so far as to get a gun for protection. Before he can decide whether to use it his superiors at the police station find out he has it and suspend him. That's okay with Rebus because it leaves him more time to pursue the hotel case. If he was a different man he might use the time to try to get back with Patience but he is too busy. That does somewhat intrigue Patience and they are together on a park bench on the last page of the book.
    • 5/5
      Nothing much of interest is going on Rebus’ patch at the start of the book, except that he gets kicked out by his lady friend, Patience. He’s let his flat out to students though, so he ends up kipping on the sofa in his own place. Before long, his friend and colleague, Detective Sergeant Holmes, gets attacked outside a late night café and is unconscious in hospital. He finds a Black Book, which was on Holmes’ person when he was attacked. It’s written in code, and seems to contain cryptic details on ‘extra-curricular cases’ he’s been working on. And Rebus has a horrible feeling that this Black Book was why he was attacked, and sets out to find out why.This is perhaps the best Rebus novel I’ve read to date. It’s difficult to describe what’s so good about it. The quality of writing is excellent, the setting is incredibly real and detailed, and Rebus’ character is so real I have a certain difficulty believing he doesn’t exist.
    • 5/5
      Another good read in the series. 4.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      Definitely a huge improvement over his last Rebus outing, I found myself a little more engaged in this one. Though I have to say, Rankin seems to have such disparate plot points going on that it really takes at least half the novel for it to get going, not sure I have the patience to continue with more of his novels. Once they get going, they tick along nicely, but I find them quite dull until that point.
    • 5/5
      The Black Book, originally published in 1993, is the fifth novel in Ian Rankin’s more-popular-than-ever Inspector John Rebus series. I didn’t begin reading the Rebus books until 2003’s A Question of Blood, but it’s been a favorite detective series of mine ever since picking up that one. In more recent months, I’ve started reading the novels from the beginning, fascinated all the while to watch Rebus and his supporting cast gradually morph into the characters I know so well from the later books. It is, I think, in this fifth novel that Ian Rankin really hits his stride, and The Black Book is now one of my favorite ones in the entire series. On display is an early look at the cranky, funny, insightful, dedicated cop that Rebus really is. Already his doctor has told him to quit smoking and to eat better - an ominous hint of what Rebus’s health will be like just a couple of decades into the future. Because the man spends so many hours of his day working cases, he finds it difficult to share his life with anyone, something he regrets only until he gets so busy again that his social isolation slips from his mind. He is reckless when it comes to placing himself in physical danger, and his equally reckless policing methods always see him in danger of finally losing his badge for good. But with one exception - finally putting away “Big Ger” Cafferty - John Rebus always gets the job done. “On Monday morning word went around St. Leonard’s police station that Inspector John Rebus was in an impressively worse mood than usual. Some found this hard to believe, and were almost willing to get close enough to Rebus to find out for themselves…almost.”Rebus has now reached the stage of his policing career where he effectively serves as mentor to the younger cops who report to him. That is the kind of work relationship he has with DS Brian Holmes and, especially, with DC Siobhan Clarke. At the moment, though, Rebus is also dealing with his ex-con brother Michael who has recently returned to Edinburgh and with being kicked out of the house by the woman with whom he’s been living. Thus, the grumpiness on display in the above quote. And just when it seems that his personal life could not be in more of a shambles than it already is, Rebus gets sucked into a situation at work that rivals every other bad thing already happening to him: DS Holmes gets the back of his head bashed in and is left in a coma, maybe never to wake up again. Rebus wants to know if the attack was work-related, but with Holmes in a coma for days, the only thing the inspector has to work with is Holmes’s “black book,” a notebook filled with investigatory notes that mean little to anyone other than the critically injured detective himself. Rebus, though, is prepared to follow the clues wherever they take him - and after his brother is attacked, it all gets very personal.Bottom Line: The Black Book is notable because of its development of the Siobhan Clarke character and her budding friendship with Rebus. It also, I think, marks the first time that Rebus and Big Ger Cafferty butt heads in a face-to-face confrontation. Interestingly, almost three decades later, Rebus will still be trying to put away Cafferty, and his bond with Siobhan will be as strong as ever. Too, Rankin is now hitting exactly the right note with his humorous asides and displays of Rebus’s own sense of humor. On offer is the dry, smart kind of wit that never fails to make me laugh - even in the middle of another look at John Rebus’s brutal world.
    • 3/5
      A good distracting read. Intriguing complex plot but everything comes together in the end. I got confused with the names at times.

    Book preview

    The Black Book - Ian Rankin

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