Ian Rankin - Saints of the Shadow Bible

5/5
Review:

Another cracker from Rankin 

Just to add another voice to the chorus of praise for this book. It's a fine Rankin novel, which is very high praise.

Rebus is back on the force as a DS, with his old station and colleagues from his first days as a rookie constable uunder investigation. Rankin uses this device very well to create a subtle, thoughtful and gripping thriller with genuine intellectual content. Just what we would expect from him by now, really.

I would just add a small caveat. Rankin's prose is normally flawless - it carries you along, it's perfectly judged and you don't notice it much, which is exactly what you want in a well-told story like this. Just occasionally in Saints Of The Shadow Bible, I felt a bit of a glitch as Rankin strives for unnecessary and sometime inappropriate synonyms for "said," for example. People "state," or "intone" or "comment" when they're just saying something normally, and they "snap back" rather too often so it becomes a bit of a tic. It's a tiny thing which doesn't detract from the excellence of the book, but I did think it was noticeable.

If you need any encouragement from me to read this book, you have it. It's a cracker which I can recommend warmly.