- This exquisitely boring and tedious new novel from Ian Rankin is only for rusted on John Rebus fans. I've long been one, so can say with confidence that even for them it would be barely sufferable.
- There are far too many characters in the saga. The whole cast over his previous twenty-four novels are included - detective colleagues, bosses, prison officers, gang leaders and criminal lowlifes of all sorts. It's way too clotted and goes on and on - name after name after name. The reader can't help but get totally flummoxed.
- We're in Her Majesty's Prison in Edinburgh, and Rebus has been a prisoner for six months having been convicted of attempted murder of a notorious career criminal. One morning a prisoner is found dead, the victim of a stabbing.
- There is a subplot too, thankfully far more navigable and interesting, featuring the immensely likeable Siobhan Clarke, Rebus's long term close colleague.
- The drama is propelled by dialogue, always witty and smart. That's the best part of the novel.
- Read one of Rankin's earlier Rebus novels and avoid this one. (But don't read under any circumstances his two Detective Malcolm Fox novels. Fox is a cold, fastidious, bureaucratic, untrustworthy, knob).
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