Knots and Crosses

Knots and Crosses is the first book in the Inspector Rebus series done by Ian Rankin. I just finished The Dark Tower series by Stephen King and was looking for another author to try out. I'm not much for mystery/detective books but I heard great reviews about Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series. So I bought it, read it, and was very glad I spent the money and time to be introduced to a mystery/detective series I actually like! What I found amazing was the way Ian could give you an in depth look at John Rebus without spending pages and pages to do it. His transitions between Rebus and the killer are well placed and give the book a good flow. What's great is that the book is about 228 pages and even though it seems short, there is plenty of plots going on to keep you busy, but not overwhelmed. How does he do it? This book, and hopefully the rest of the series, is well thought out and gives a different look at detective stories with a twist of Edinburgh style. A definite must read and the price of the paperback book can't be beat!

He had wanted to update Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for modern times, Ian Rankin writes about his first Inspector Rebus novel, "Knots and Crosses" in the introduction to the British compilation "Rebus: The Early Years" (unfortunately, not available in the U.S.), which contains the first three installments of the series. Oblivious to the mere existence of such a thing as the mystery genre - or so Rankin says - he was stunned to soon hear his book described first and foremost as a crime novel. But eventually this characterization prompted him to have a closer look at the work of other mystery writers, and he found that the form suited his purposes just fine; that in fact he "could say everything [he] wanted to say about the world, and still give readers a pacy, gripping narrative." Bearing in mind the original duality of Jekyll and Hyde, however, Rankin's tales are not dominated by a contrast painted in black and white. While the villains Inspector Rebus faces are certainly every bit as evil as Stevenson's Mr. Hyde, Rebus himself is far from a clean-slated "good guy:" Divorced, cynical, hard-drinking and a former member of the SAS, he is a brother in spirit to every noir detective from Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe to Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, James Ellroy's squad of crooked cops and Peter Robinson's Alan Banks. Nor is Rebus's Edinburgh the touristy town of Calton Hill, castle and Summer Festival (although the series has meanwhile sparked real-life guided tours to its most famous locations, too) - as befitting a true detective of his ilk, Rankin's antihero moves primarily in the city's dark and dirty underbelly, which is populated by society's losers and where those who have "made it," those with money in their pockets, only show up if they have shady deals to conduct as well. In a similar fashion to Michael Connelly's first Harry Bosch novel "The Black Echo," where Bosch is forced to revisit the experiences he made as a Vietnam "tunnel rat," in "Knots and Crosses" Rebus must uncover long-buried memories of his SAS past. For hunting a serial killer whom the tabloids quickly dub "The Edinburgh Strangler," and whose headline-gathering murders at first seem totally unrelated, Rebus eventually makes the connection between those crimes and a series of anonymous letters he receives, and realizes that it is he himself who is the killer's true target, and that the murderer's crimes are based on such a cruel scheme - and executed with such inhuman skill and precision - that only one particular man's thoroughly disturbed mind can have come up with them. And at the same time, Rebus is trying to work out his difficult relationship with his brother Michael, whose life is so different from his own - financially successful and ostensibly happily married and squeaky clean throughout, Michael seems to be on the sunny side of life in every respect labeled a failure in Rebus's own life story -

The series featuring DS John Rebus has been around for a while and is very popular in the UK.Therefore I decided to pick up the first novel. I was very surprised indeed. It is a very strong,dark and gloomy thriller set against the unusual background of Edinburgh. The DS is a drop out of the army's elite unt, SAS and has become a veteran policeman."A good, but not very good one"according to his boss.The city is haunted by a serial killer who goes for little girls, without harming them sexually.John is receiving all kinds of notes which are written as riddles. He neglects them for a while but with the help of his brother he finds a connection in his past to the killer and goes on a haunt.The hunt is not heroical and leaves a lot of scars for the people involved. In particular Rebus himself is on the receiving end.The story is written so tightly that you can't help wanting to finish it in one setting and leaves a lot of looking forward to the next installments.A good read.

Ian Rankin gets better every time I read another one of his books. After reading "Knots and Crosses", I felt like I had seen it on TV or video, his descriptions were so vivid! The main character is so very human and not always loveable, but understandable nevertheless. Inspector Rebus is a divorced Scot, a Policeman with an ex-wife and 11 year old daughter. He has the usual troubles and has been compared to other English detectives. He has had a troubled past and his way of working things out and his leaps of intuition are both believable and satisfying.I recommend this book, but since it is out of print, you may not be able to find it.

What a pleasure it is to discover an untapped mystery series. It was almost purely by chance that I picked up Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses, but it will be with eagerness that I pursue the other books about John Rebus of the Edinburgh police force.Knots and Crosses is in part a classic police procedural that takes place in the seamy side of Edinburgh that guidebooks never show and that tourists never suspect. The hunted criminal is a serial killer - "But here, in Edinburgh. It's intolerable." The book is also a fascinating psychological mystery with the events of the present rooted in the past and shaped by the meetings of minds. The intricate but never stretched plot is full of unexpected interconnections among the cast of characters.The chief joy in reading the novel comes from the writing itself. As the title and the detective's name hint, we're in for word play and words loaded with meaning. Thrown in is some hypnotism, excesses of tobacco, sex, and alcohol, a love of books and literature, and love.As the investigation heats and the killer has the "police force tied in knots," Rebus "was feeling like the detective in a cheap thriller and wished that he could turn to the last page." We are lucky; this is not a cheap thriller and we enjoy every page up to the very satisfying last.