Product Description

Strip Jack: MP Gregor Jack is caught in an Edinburgh brothel with a prostitute only too keen to show off her considerable assets. Then Jack's wife disappears. Someone wants to strip Jack naked and Rebus wants to know why. The Black Book: When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body and a long-forgotten night of terror and murder. Rebus must piece together a jigsaw no one wants completed. Mortal Causes: It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing. A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and Rebus suspects the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of terrorism in a city heaving with tourists is unthinkable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7855 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

About the Author
Ian Rankin was born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960. In 1997 he was awarded the Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction for Black and Blue. His subsequent Rebus novels have all been international bestsellers. He lives with his wife and two sons in Edinburgh.

Customer Reviews

Rankin and Rebus go from strength to strength
Having been drawn into the Inspector Rebus series through "Rebus: The Early Years", particularly "Knots & Crosses" and "Tooth & Nail", and the underrated "A Good Hanging and other stories", "Rebus: The St Leonard's Years" was an automatic purchase for me.

The three novels, "Strip Jack", "The Black Book" and "Mortal Causes", improve on the previous books with only "Strip Jack" being a slight disappointment The other two are real page turners, as we follow Rebus in pursuit of the "truth" behind each case.

With each book Rankin seems to become ever more comfortable with Rebus as a character, and the complexity of the plot and the number of characters increases. Characters from the earlier books also make welcome reappearances, giving the series real continuity.

The strength of the series for me is the way Rankin dangles the clues in front of Rebus and the reader, making you want to solve the case yourself (I haven't done so since "Knots & Crosses"!) and keep reading. If the next 3 books in the series show the same improvement I can't wait to read them.

Completely Hooked
Rebus is deeply addictive and grows more interesting with every book. I've worked my way through the more cut-and-dried novels of the Early Years and have just moved swiftly through these "Three Great Novels". For the moment I don't think I can easily envisage inhabiting any other world than this dour Scot's. I was much amused by the section in Strip Jack where he finds an old lady who keeps the phone box near her house as a miniature version of her own starched front parlour - a nice piece of human observation - if you are the nearest house to the phone box and it is ill kept it reflects badly upon you. The remote Scottish hamlet where my grandparents lived featured just such a phone box complete with busy-body crone who kept the directory in her house - you'd have to knock on her door and tell her the name you wanted and she would go and look it up and then give it too you on a wee scrap of paper. My mother always said she was a great loss to the intelligence services, although her surveillance was far from discreet. I wonder whether Rankin knows this same village or if it is a particular highland phenomenon. Great fun though, in a dricht and drear kind of way.

Three of Rankin's finest in one book
Once again Rankin surpasses himself. Books four, five and six in one volume. Extremely good value for money (especially if you're Scottish!). Each tale twists and turns, whilst all the time leaving you wondering .... who dunnit. Reubus (and Rankin) never fail you.