Strip Jack

For all the right reasons, Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus calls for comparison with Colin Dexter's Oxford copper Inspector Morse. Both spend a lot of time in pubs and bemoan the onset of middle age; each is a shrewd detective with a literary bent who operates in an academic town where clashes of culture beget victims. When much-loved politician Gregor Jack is discovered in a midnight raid on a discreet brothel, a surprising number of journalists are on hand--a situation that endangers Jack's political future. Jack's wealthy wife Elizabeth, a noted partygoer whose friends are equally well-heeled and hedonistic, can't be found. Her body is soon pulled from a nearby river, a fatality mirroring the recent murder of another, unidentified, woman. A drunk who brags of the first killing gives a false address and vanishes north of the city. Meanwhile Rebus, trying to trace a cache of valuable stolen books, finds himself talking again to the late Elizabeth's coterie of party friends. Rankin creates a living, breathing world in which his weary protagonist tackles his cases while involved in the intricacies of the day-to-day: pints and hangovers, stumbling romance, wet weather, damp clothes, tricky superiors and wide-eyed subordinates. All are brought to bear, yet all are ultimately jettisoned as Rebus closes in on the satisfying solution. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A return to Edinburgh and its sturdy police force, focusing again on Detective Inspector John Rebus (Knobs and Crosses, 1988; Watchman, 1991) as he now tries to solve the murder of Liz Jack- -only child of mogul Sir Hugh Ferrie; wife of respected Member of Parliament Gregor Jack; and, in her well-hidden private life, centerpiece of wild weekends at Deer Lodge, her isolated cottage. Jack himself seemed uninvolved in those activities but had recently been caught in a well-publicized raid on a brothel that--to Rebus, anyway--looked like a set-up. As his superiors try to make a case against a local drifter, Rebus struggles through red herrings, false alibis, secret liaisons, and his own arid emotions until, aided by sharp-eyed sidekick Brian Holmes, he nails his quarry. A solidly absorbing procedural--all enlivened by a succession of offbeat characters and by the author's eccentric but appealing narrative style.