Rebus is supposed to be suffering from PTSD because of trauma he experienced during his Special Services training.

This was an uncomplicated, character-driven noir with a protagonist that I couldn't care less about. Jim Stevens reappears in Rankin's third book, Watchman, following his move to London at the end of Knots; he appears again in the tenth novel, Dead Souls, where he is murdered.Obviously, the two must have cooked up a system of underground mutual support and coverup of their drug trade. The fact that Rebus solves brutal murders from the grittiest sides of Edinburgh, the dark heart of contemporary Britain which lurks behind the elegant and historic facade was said of Raymond multiple times.

John Rebus reminded me of a lot of detectives from the time Knots and Crosses was written, like Elvis Cole, for instance, but what he really reminded me of was a late 1980's version of Dorothy Sayers' shell-shocked aristocrat detective, Lord Peter Whimsey.

When the plot's so simple (in one of the early chapters the killer becomes exasperated that Rebus hasn't identified him yet and we, the readers, can do nothing but nod and despondently shout 'yes, why haven't you? I'd been toying with Rankin's other crime fiction work, but then it was time to read the real thing. as if our hero is PC Plod rather than a highly trained detective) it's essential that we should care about the characters. This first offering is much darker and at times the prose is lyrical to the extent it feels like reading poetry. He states he was shocked to find out later that everyone thought he'd written a crime book, as he was unfamiliar with the genre.

I also enjoyed reading about sections that were only hinted at briefly in the television versions such as an emotionally despondent segment where under hypnosis Rebus reflects on his time training for the SAS.I first read this book many years ago, along with many others in the series, then lost touch with them, so I decided to revisit it from the start. That most of the time, whoever ends up dead did something they should have known better than to do, and all cases are solved within sixty minutes on the telly. bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES 'This is British crime-writing of the finest, lasting quality' DAILY MAIL 'Genius . The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.