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: #59726 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Born in the Kingdom of Fife in 1960, Ian Rankin graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and then spent three years writing novels when he was supposed to be working towards a PhD in Scottish Literature. His first Rebus novel was published in 1987, and the Rebus books are now translated into thirty-six languages and are bestsellers worldwide. Ian Rankin has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and is also a past winner of the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards including the prestigious Diamond Dagger in 2005. In 2004, Ian won America's celebrated Edgar Award for Resurrection Men. He has also been shortlisted for the Anthony Award in the USA, won Denmark's Palle Rosenkrantz Prize, the French Grand Prix du Roman Noir and the Deutscher Krimipreis. Ian Rankin is also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Abertay, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Hull and the Open University. A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts. Rankin is a number one bestseller in the UK and has received the OBE for services to literature, opting to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.

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.