Product Description

When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder. Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague's notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws. But not everyone wants the puzzle solved - perhaps not even Rebus himself ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21982 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Ian Rankin is a regular No.1 bestseller, and has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Diamond Dagger. He lives with his family in Edinburgh, and in 2003 received an OBE for his services to literature.

Customer Reviews

First toe in the water
This is my first Rankin novel, at first I thought that the hype was rather undeserved but as the book progressed I could see that Rebus did have some personal characteristics that were sympathetic, uncaring, cynical and just about any other trait that a mixed up kind of guy like him would have. His work ethic was manic and unsurprisingly one of the reasons he finds himself sleeping on the couch of his own apartment after being turfed out of his long suffering girlfriends place. Rebus is believable to the extent that he is not adverse to setting up a child molester for a beating, the vigilante ethic alive and well in the moral whirlpool of the police force. The story contained sufficient twists and turns to keep it interesting and the reader tends to sympathise with Rebus in his fight against the establishment.

The best Rebus I've read!
I became hooked on the Rebus novels after being lent "Black And Blue" last Summer. As an Edinburgh girl abroad, it was great to read a fantastic crime novel based in my hometown. I then started to read the whole series from the beginning and can really say that "The Black Book" is definitely my favourite. Great story, fantastic humour, a real cliff-hanger. Ian Rankin has got to be the best British crime-writer of the moment. Don't know what I'll do when I've finished all the books. Start at the beginning again!

Not Rankin's best, but still good.
This dark and gritty crime thriller is very good in its own right, but when put next to some of the other novels in the series, it stands out as one of the poorest.
The characters are believable, but are not placed in particularly beleivable situations, and the would-be-witty remarks made by people and the narrative start to become annoying.