Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51704 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

TIME OUT
'Just as Rebus keeps getting his man, Rankin keeps not only hitting his mark, but defining it'

Review
'Rankin's home provided him with a brilliant backdrop for a crime novel: Edinburgh during the crazy week in 2005 when the G8 came to town' (LITERARY REVIEW )

'Masterly...Ian Rankin's finest novel. It is more than a crime novel, or rather, Rankin's achievement is to show, convincingly, how crime permeates society' (THE SCOTSMAN )

'The Naming of the Dead is Ian Rankin's Exile on Main Street: dark, murky and less immediate than his other novels, but still zinging with wit and his inimitable gift for plot. His richest and most complex work to date, it comes close to trascending genre fiction' (SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY )

'Rebus's latest adventure is as gripping as ever' (THE LONDON PAPER )

'Rebus may seem to be running on something very near empty, but there is no sign that Rankin has lost any of the energy to continue this consistently impressive series' (SUNDAY TIMES )

'This may be Rankin's 19th Rebus book, but while there's still plenty of life in the old devil yet, Siobhan Clarke is proving that she is more than capable of taking up the baton' (DAILY MIRROR )

'Rankin deftly inserts Rebus into the true story of that week, culminating, as it did in the London bombings of July 7. An excellent performance, for a cop on the verge of extinction' (Marcel Berlins THE TIMES )

'combines the page-turning appeal of a modern police procedural with the moral complexity of a political novel' (John Boyne THE IRISH TIMES )

'Politics crashes head on into Inspector Rebus's usual interests (solving grisly murders and supping pints) in the latest of this award-winning series. The Naming of the Dead set against the 2005 G8 Summit, is yet another irresistable page-turner from the UK's best crime novelist' (MAIL ON SUNDAY )

'Not only an intriguing murder-mystery but an excellent piece of reportage. Ian Rankin, despite his dodgy musical tastes, has produced yet another class act' (Mark Sanderson EVENING STANDARD )

'This one with its heady mix of crime and current affairs, is staggering. He is now at the top of his game and has almost catapulted himself out of the more limited crime genre altogether' (DAILY MAIL )

'Rankin is on top form here, with a suitably scornful attitude to Bob Geldof and the wishy-washy Live8 endeavour. Excellent stuff' (DUBLIN EVENING HERALD )

'This is Rankin at his hard-bitten best' (METRO LONDON )

'Rankin is on top form: in a stellar career, this is the best Rebus yet' (SAGA )

'Classic Rankin, and if you're in love with the unchangeable Rebus, you'll relish it. It's page-turning, complicated crime' (Frances Fyfield THE INDEPEDENT )

'Classic Rebus' (SHE )

'Crime writing at its best' (WOMAN AND HOME )

'as much a political thriller as a crime mystery. His vivid descriptions of the so-called Battle of Princes Street are as good as any newspaper reports written at the time' (Allan Laing GLASGOW HERALD )

'The plot is another Rankin corker, complex yet convincing, and played out on this occasion over only nine days against the backdrop of last year's G8 summit at Gleneagles, with its retinue of concerts and marches against poverty...The best crime novel you'll read this year' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'Impeccably plotted, dripping with suspense and never afraid to get down and dirty this book is further proof a nation will weep when Rebus hangs up his cuffs' (Shari Low DAILY RECORD )

'Rankin brings his characters to life with precision, and handles the novel's complex thematic relationships with his usual skill' (TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT )

'Rankin's mischievous sense of humour is strongly evident too with an inspired Ann Summers/Basque separatists gag' (FQ )

'a big, sometimes elegiac, read' (Peter Gutteridge THE OBSERVER )

'Rankin just gets better. The topicality and eye for detail are awesome' (Jilly Cooper THE OBSERVER - Books of the Year )

'Ian Rankin is back on splendid form with The Naming of the Dead' (THE SPECTATOR )

'Just as Rebus keeps getting his man, Rankin keeps not only hitting his mark, but defining it' (TIME OUT )

'Rankin is on top form here, with a suitably scornful attitude to Bob Geldof and the wishy-washy live 8 endeavour. Excellent stuff' (EVENING HERALD DUBLIN )

METRO LONDON
'This is Rankin at his hard-bitten best'

Customer Reviews

MODUS IN REBUS
How you rate this Inspector Rebus story may depend to some extent on what you think of the solution to the mystery, which is obviously something a reviewer ought not to give away. On the other hand it will take you nearly 500 very enjoyable pages before you get there. So far as this reader is concerned, there is nothing much wrong with the solution. I can't persuade myself that it is the job of a detective story to turn out like a factual police investigation in real life, and although the outcome should not be preposterous it ought to be imaginative, and it is imaginative here.

I have no idea whether Ian Rankin belongs to the Agatha Christie school of whodunit plotting, or to the Raymond Chandler school. We know from Chandler himself that he wrote most of his Marlowe tales without knowing who the murderer was: Mrs Christie was not so forthcoming so far as I am aware, but surely she must have had the final denouements in mind from the outset and structured the rest of it round them so that we can be as amazed as the respectful and silent gatherings who listen to Poirot or Miss Marple explaining all over ten or a dozen pages. Where Rankin seems to me to side with Chandler is in making the rest of the story and the characterisation more significant in their own right than they are in the solution-focused Christie style, and I find that to my own liking. In fact this is the first Rebus story I have ever read, but it will not be the last. The glum, dogged and cantankerous old corner-cutter is getting on in years, now within a year of compulsory retirement and obviously facing a bleak outlook when that comes, as there is nothing much in his life except the job. His portrayal is sympathetic and quite convincing if not exactly delineated in as much depth as Hamlet, so is that of his oppo Siobhan Clarke, and convincing also, if less sympathetic, is that of the other main players. The storyline is absolutely excellent in my own opinion, and it held my interest completely through what is quite a long book. Rankin has true storytelling technique, the result of experience as well as of talent. Links between episodes are very artfully done and if one's attention wanders at all it is liable to mean rereading a couple of paragraphs. The background in July 2005 - the Gleneagles summit of the G8, the British Olympics bid for 2012 and the 7/7 bombings in London - is inspired, and the scene-setting in the author's native Edinburgh is as authentic as we would expect. The writing is of high quality, but in case anyone was wondering, a `rammy' is a fight and `Shug' is `Hugh'.

One detail in particular has not worked out in quite the way Rankin obviously expected, and Mr Blair's brainwave of obtaining `loans' rather than donations to the Labour party (the idea being to avoid declaration) blew back in his face in spectacular fashion. This very excusable misprognostication does affect the credibility of one aspect of the final outcome, I suppose, but at the end of the day this is fiction, and the historical backdrop is very convincing by and large. I don't believe I would have wanted the story to resemble the miserable real-life murder investigations that I have become all too familiar with. There is an appropriate standard for different kinds of things, or `Est modus in rebus' as they say in the Classics, and that suits me very well provided the narrator is good enough at his job. I was sorry to come to the end of this book. Dear old Rebus may be bowing out, but I have all his previous adventures to get to know, and I am looking forward to it.

Readable, but slow and ultimately marred by ludicrous plot
Retains reader's interest (at least for long-time Revus fan like me) but overlong and clunky, especially in its efforts to link crime story to anti-G8 demonstrations of 2005 in Edinburgh. Subplots with Rebus versus Special Branch commander Steelforth and DS Siobhan Clarke and her liberal anti-globalization parents a bit predictable. Real let down, however, is the sheer ridiculousness of the plot when all finally revealed - crime fans like myself are willing to suspend some belief for the sake of twists-and-turns, atmosphere and thrill but this one is plain stupid.

Classic Rebus
You really sense here that something is ending. Rebus is reaching retirement and although there is anger here, just as in the previous books, it is tempered by melancholy and some regret. You feel that Rankin may be stepping it up a gear for Siobhan, as she gets much more stage time in this story.

Set against the background of the G8 summit this is really a story about the sacrifices we are prepared to make for family, and whether those sacrifices, so meaningful to us, mean anything to those we love, or indeed change anything in the wider world. A thoughtful story, but with flashes of the grit and rage that makes Rebus such an interesting character.