In the twelfth outing for John Rebus, Edinburgh's grumpy and self-destructive police detective, the action begins with a student going missing. There is very little to go on, but when a carved wooden doll in a tiny coffin appears not far from the family home, Rebus starts to make links to other instances where carved coffins have been discovered in the past - all the way back to a seat of 16 found in a hillside in 1836. His colleagues think he's barking up the wrong tree, so when another lead emerges to do with an Internet role-playing game that the missing girl was involved in - that becomes the focus for his long time mentee, Siobhan Clarke. The Falls, by Ian Rankin is a real cat-and-mouse crime novel, with lots of red herrings and peril along the way. Rebus is dogged in his belief that the coffins hold clues, and, as usual, this gets him into trouble with his superiors. Along the way, he forms a personal relationship with a local historian, so there is a little love interest - but Rebus doesn't have a good history when it comes to mixing his work with his home life, especially when his capacity to seek solace at the bottom of a pint glass overwhelms him. Always enjoyable and full of interesting detail, Ian Rankin's creation rarely disappoints - and this is no exception.
My STAR rating: FOUR.
Formats available: print; audio CD; unabridged audio download; ebook.
Length: 479 print pages.
Price I paid: free, borrowed from my husband.
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