Hide And Seek: From the iconic #1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES

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There's not much of Rebus' personal life here: wife and daughter are out of the picture, he has split up from Gill Templer (though there are still some feelings there), his brother has been packed off to jail, and there isn't that much interaction with his colleagues beyond Holmes (whom he is only just getting to know) and Watson. He is okay as a means of telling a decent story, but if I’m going to really enjoy a crime series I need to love a character. The reason I enjoyed this one more than the first and the reason why it did not work itself to a higher rating can be pointed towards the same thing – the character of Rebus.

Rebus enlists Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes -- "Someone who didn't know Rebus well enough to complain about being kept in the dark, about being used as a shunting engine" -- to help him out, and though there is some friction between the two they make a decent team. Some side plots in the story involve illegal dog fights, a gay character, and Rebus's ex-lover - Gillian Templer - who has a new radio DJ boyfriend. First edition/first printing, ex-library copy in dark blue boards library binding, no titling to spine.Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. Rebus’s profligate drinking, and woeful attempts to limit his smoking habit are amusing at first, but become tedious. If we never talk about this shit, the problem will never go away, which, for many people (namely, sex traffickers and child pornographers and pedophiles), is a great thing.

In reading some reviews, I now understand that the future John Rebus is, as one reviewer put it, “surly, petulant, impulsive and distrusting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Trump is still saying stupid shit that the lapdogs at FOX News eat up like candy and Clinton is publishing unreadable thrillers with James Patterson. But gradually Inspector John Rebus sifted through the rubble, finding not a lot to shock him, but more than he'd expected. I really did not liked the first Inspector Rebus novel but memory is a bit fickle so I decided to go back to Rankin and give him a another chance.Junkies, addicts and pushers; gay and straight prostitution; dog fighting; illegal high stakes gaming and brothels; corruption in the police force, on the bench and at the bar; alcoholics and drunkards - they all make their way onto the stage of Hide and Seek in a novel that seems determined to portray Scotland as a bleak and unrelentingly dreary den of sin and iniquity.

Each chapter starts with a quote from the classic and some of the characters share their names with characters from “Dr. But what we have instead is a culture that still, for the most part, sweeps the vile crimes that these fuckers commit under the rug. It emerges that the dead man took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club named Hyde's, where highly connected people in society watch illegal boxing matches. It is such a well-known name – from the television series all the way through to references being made in other crime fiction (points towards Stuart MacBride) – with the books catching my attention on many occasions. Getting back to Rankin’s novel: published in 1990, “Hide and Seek” was written at a time when this horrendous shit was still a taboo subject.A young junkie named Ronnie McGrath is found dead in an Edinburgh squat - positioned like Christ on the cross - with candles beside him and what looks like satanic symbols on the wall. Do yourself a favour – if you like crime fiction but have somehow missed out on the delights of Rebus, put it right ASAP. Signed by the author along with his tic-tac-toe drawing on the title page Page edges beginning to uniformly tan, else a fine, bright copy in dustt jacket. Hide and Seek is the second novel in the series (you can read my review of the first one, Knots and Crosses, here). This second novel in the Inspector Rebus series was intended as a companion to the first and again the literary references are evident throughout and the play of the famous novel Jekyll and Hyde works well as things unravel.