Black and Blue (Inspector John Rebus Series #8)

by Ian Rankin

Overview

Bible John killed three women, and took three souvenirs. Johnny Bible killed to steal his namesake's glory. Oilman Allan Mitchelson died for his principles. And convict Lenny Spaven died just to prove a point. "Bible John" terrorized Glasgow in the sixties and seventies, murdering three women he met in a local ballroom—and he was never caught. Now a copycat is at work. Nicknamed "Bible Johnny" by the media, he is a new menace with violent ambitions.

The Bible Johnny case would be perfect for Inspector John Rebus, but after a run-in with a crooked senior officer, he's been shunted aside to one of Edinburgh's toughest suburbs, where he investigates the murder of an off-duty oilman. His investigation takes him north to the oil rigs of Aberdeen, where he meets the Bible Johnny media circus head-on. Suddenly caught in the glare of the television cameras and in the middle of more than one investigation, Rebus must proceed with caution: One mistake could mean an unpleasant and not particularly speedy death, or, worse still, losing his job.

Written with Ian Rankin's signature wit, style and intricacy, Black and Blue is a novel of uncommon and unforgettable intrigue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312586492
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/24/2009
Series:	Inspector John Rebus Series , #8
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	267,891
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Ian Rankin is the worldwide #1 bestselling writer of the Inspector Rebus books, including Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, Let It Bleed, 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.

Hometown:

Edinburgh, London and France

Date of Birth:

April 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Cardenden, Scotland

Education:

Edinburgh University

Website:

http://www.ianrankin.net

What People are Saying About This

"Brilliant...the kind of blistering police procedural that gives the genre a good name." --Entertainment Weekly (A rating)

"Reading [Ian Rankin] is like watching somebody juggle a dozen bottles of single malt without spilling a drop." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Ian Rankin is a novelist of great scope, depth, and power, and Black and Blue is a dark, intensely evocative and altogether riveting thriller. Brilliant." --Bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman

"Ian Rankin's Scottish police procedurals are so gritty you have to pick the shards out of your teeth when you finish one, and Black and Blue is as flinty as they come." --The New York Times Book Review

OVERWHELMING ACCLAIM FOR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR IAN RANKIN
"In Rankin you cannot go wrong." --The Boston Globe

"The progenitor--and king--of tartan noir." --James Ellroy, author of L.A. Confidential

"A brutal but beautifully written series...The author pushes the procedural form well past conventional genre limits." --The New York Times Book Review

"A master of mood and setting." --Toronto Globe and Mail

"Rankin gives his inspector a refreshing smart-ass personality." --San Francisco Chronicle

"John Rebus calls for comparison with Colin Dexter's Oxford copper Inspector Morse...Rankin creates a living, breathing world in which his weary protagonist tackles 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." -- Publishers Weekly

Jonathan Kellerman

Ian Rankin is a novelist of great scope, depth, and power, and Black and Blue is a dark, intensely evocative and altogether riveting thriller. Brilliant.

Editorial Reviews

A powerfully complex crime novel that offers a panoramic portrait of modern Scotland, from Glasgow gangland to the oil platforms of the North Sea.” —Mail on Sunday

“Rankin excels himself here as Rebus comes of age… a first-rate and gripping novel.” —Sunday Times

“Rankin's dexterity in juggling plots and threats and motives lights up the darkness with a poet's grace. Reading him is like watching somebody juggle a dozen bottles of single malt without spilling a drop.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Rankin's book is long and complex but rich in character and incident as Rebus dodges his investigators, follows his hunches into some violent confrontations, and explores the strange mid-ocean world of North Sea oil.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ian Rankin is a novelist of great scope, depth and power and Black & Blue is a dark, intensely evocative and altogether riveting thriller.” —Jonathan Kellerman

From the Publisher

Brilliant...the kind of blistering police procedural that gives the genre a good name....Rankin's prose is so graceful, the complicated plot so seamless, and the portraits of even minor characters so searing, it makes for an almost flawless performance.

Entertainment Weekly

Ian Rankin's Scottish police procedurals are so gritty you have to pick the shards out of your teeth when you finish one, and Black and Blue is as flinty as they come.

New York Times Book Review

Nearly 30 years after a serial killer dubbed Bible John abruptly retired after three vicious murders, he's back in the news again. Johnny Bible, an equally perverted killer who seems to be much younger, is imitating him with a gusto that suggests close research. Even though he knew one of Johnny Bible's victims, Edinburgh's Inspector John Rebus is in no position to take on this new case; he's got his hands full with a murdered oil-rig painter and the threatened reopening of a case in which he and his mentor, Inspector Lawson Geddes, may have planted evidence years and years ago that framed Lenny Spaven, who went to his death insisting he was innocent. When Rebus takes a few days in Aberdeen to visit the oil company's headquarters and incidentally chat up the locals about another of Johnny Bible's victims, he ends up under suspicion of killing a fourth victim himself and gets stuck with a minder who'll report his every move back to the very same Chief Inspector who's been put in charge of the Spaven case. Can things get any worse? Of course they can. For even though Rebus is behind the eight-ball, another avenger—Bible John himself—is prepared to do whatever it takes to catch the copycat.

Rebus's eighth case (Let It Bleed, 1996, etc.) is his biggest and most grueling so far. Yet Rankin's dexterity in juggling plots and threats and motives lights up the darkness with a poet's grace. Reading him is like watching somebody juggle a dozen bottles of single malt without spilling a drop.

Kirkus Reviews