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Summary: The Voice of Dissent
Review: After reading the other reviews, I wondered if I read the same book. Slow, complex, convoluted. Honestly, Edinburgh does not present the alure that it apparently does to others.Plot focuses around simple greed of land developers and double crossing by the dark side of a seedy lot of players. It took me much too long to connect any of the dots and when I did it was a disappointing picture. First and last visit to Mr. Rankin's world. Buyer Beware.
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Summary: Rebus one of the finest fictional detectives this century
Review: By and large, fictional detectives aren't a cheery lot. Kay Scarpetta spends her time contemplating the ugliness of humanity, surrounded by corpses which illustrate man's inhumanity to man. The brilliant Adam Dalgliesh isn't exactly the life of the party, though he's an extremely sensitive soul who writes poetry - an intriguing character facet. But Ian Rankin's Edinburgh police inspector John Rebus is a breed unto himself. He loves the Rolling Stones and rock music in general. He has terrible luck with women and drinks far too much for his own good. He's stubborn, often rude and causes his superiors a great deal of worry. How many of us can identify with us on one level or another? Yet I'm always glad to see him in any new novel by Mr. Rankin and "Set In Darkness" does not disappoint. Rankin's Rebus is one of the most memorable characters in 20th century crime fiction. Though his is a morose personality, his dark sides never eclipse his basic humanity. He makes mistakes and bad choices in his personal life, but when it comes to solving a crime he's dead on and often at odds with his long-suffering co-workers. This time, Rebus must solve the mystery of the death of Roddy Grieve, an up-and-coming member of the Scottish Parliment who possesses a surname I found rather interesting, given his tragic fate. Grieve turns up dead on the same piece of land where a new Scottish Parliment building is going to be built. But he's not the first body to turn up in the ruins of the building on this property which is being demolished - an unknown skeleton has preceeded Grieve in death and has been walled up in the old building. Who put it there? Who is it? And what's being covered up? Rankin sprinkles his main story with well-constructed subplots. This time, Rebus is confronted with a co-worker who is also a stalker harrassing a police-women and personal friend of Rebus'. To look at the world through Rebus' eyes is to see it through a painful lens. Yet his moody persona permeates memorable sequences and Rankin's plots are always delightfully twisted. I've read all the Inspector Rebus novels from the first to this latest one, and have never been disappointed in the least by any of them. Rankin's skill as a mystery writer is in the same superior league as P. D. James and Agatha Christie.
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Summary: Murder in Parliament, Then and Now
Review: Detective Inspector John Rebus always under scrutiny from his superiors is thrust into the political spotlight when a Member of Parliament is found slain on the grounds of the newly renovated Scottish Parliament building. Then another body turns up, but this one died about twenty years ago and was just discovered in the boarded up basement fireplace among the renovations. Tact is called for, instead Rebus brings turmoil and trouble, but he does solve the crime, both of them. This is my fourth Inspector Rebus novel and I guess I've going to have to go back and read them all, they are that good. Reviewed by Vesta Irene
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Summary: Rebus personifies gritty Edinburgh
Review: Dreary winter is settling over Edinburgh but the building boom bustles on and Inspector John Rebus, for his sins, finds himself assigned to security at Queensbury House, the intended home of the new Scottish parliament. His tour of the renovation is as dull as expected until their guide rips the boards off an old fireplace, exposing a skeleton dating from previous rebuilding in the late 70s. This is only the first of three bodies. The second is a suicide, a homeless man with a substantial bank account, but the third is a scion of the prominent Grieve family, an up-and-coming politician. The first two are parceled out to underlings (and lively, well-drawn characters they are) but Rebus gets young Roddy Grieve, killed on the parliament grounds. Only trouble his, Rebus is seconded to a young department protégé, an earnest, desk-bound go-getter (and ultimately a marvelous, scary character). For loner Rebus, this is no way to work. Gruff, direct (some would say confrontational), with a sardonic sense of humor, Rebus is as hard drinking and broody as ever. Educated hunches and police footwork takes him and his team into the roughest alleys and pubs as well as the highest echelons of the privileged. In the intrigues and intricacies of high finance and corruption, Rebus begins to spy a pattern. But the unexpected release of Rebus' nemesis, crime boss Gerald Cafferty, exacerbate his difficulties with authority, threatening both case and career. Though longer than Rankin's previous novels, there is no padding in the twisting, turning plot. Rankin ("Dead Souls," "Black and Blue") draws the reader into damp, gritty Edinburgh and Rebus, a man of dark depths, is the personification of the city. Well up to Rankin's award-winning standards, his vivid style has a trenchant immediacy.
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Summary: Where snakes in the ground go absolutely free
Review: Farmer Watson has decided to keep Detective Inspector John Rebus out of trouble by assigning him to a committee concerned with the new Scottish Parliament's security. Rebus inspects the building work at Queensbury House with his colleagues, including fast-tracker Derek Linford. However, Rebus seems to attract trouble, and it's not long before a body is discovered... I've only read the one Rebus novel before, The Hanging Garden, and in that earlier composition, Rebus seemed to work much more on his own. Set in Darkness is a more of an ensemble piece, and seems to hail from the tradition of the police procedural. Rebus's colleagues are very much in the limelight, featuring Linford's flirtation with Siobhan Clarke, and the 'Time Team' of Wylie and Hood. There are just as many coincidences as you'd find in three editions of TV's 'The Bill' (where the two crimes per episode are always inextricably linked). This is probably related to the Kevin Bacon game, the 'six degrees of separation' (where everyone on the planet has links with everyone else), mentioned in the novel. Rankin concentrates on the smaller universe that consists of Edinburgh, and this is more than enough. Indeed, so flourished is this novel with characters, that if you put the narrative down, you're bound to be really confused when you come back to it. Not long after 'Skelly' is discovered in Queensbury House, the corpse of the prospective MSP Roddy Grieve is also found there. Siobhan Clarke witnesses the suicide of a tramp who had half a million in the bank. Meanwhile, two men are assaulting women from singles' clubs. Rebus's investigation brings him to Rosslyn Chapel, the cryptic home of cranks and the Knights Templar, the secretive movement that was the first police force, invented banking, that fought at Bannockburn, and laid the foundations of Scotland's Masonic tradition. However, Rebus is far more interested in the Edinburgh masons of the last twenty years, since the previous devolution referendum. Just whose is the body in the fireplace at Queensbury House? Early on in the novel, a historian relates a tale about the lunatic son of the Duke of Queensbury, who ate a servant on the night of the Act of Union, and left him on a spit in the fireplace. This is where Rankin is at his best - he employs the real Edinburgh to great effect. The Oxford Bar, Rebus's local, is a real hostelry. This adds a note of authenticity to Rankin's work, and it's quite stimulating trying to track down all the locations mentioned in this novel. It's also amusing to see Rebus's scepticism about devolution - rogues will always be rogues, no matter where they're housed. Ian Rankin also seems to be warming to his new career as literary critic. There's quite a bit of Hugh MacDiarmid in this book, fairly appropriately, as he was a founder of the Scottish Nationalist party. MacDiarmid also joined the Communist party at a quite inappropriate time. The Grieve family have been in politics for generations, starting from the Liberal Party, from Old to New Labour, with also a flirtation with the Tories. An artistic as well as a political family, they have an 'unknown' MacDiarmid poem hanging on the walls of their family home. MacDiarmid's real name was Christopher Murray Grieve (although he's no relation of the Grieve family here). He's not the only one to use a pseudonym in the novel: so does the mysterious suicide victim, 'Chris Mackie', but for less artistic reasons. You don't have to have read all the other novels in this series to appreciate Set in Darkness. I can compare this with The Hanging Garden and see that Rankin still maintains his obsession with popular music (but then Rebus is an aficionado too, so that's alright - although this does mean that the inevitable recording session makes its way into the book). This might seem a bit tiresome, but then again I guess detectives do have to have some small talk to relax their subjects. Rebus says he's been reading up on his Edinburgh history recently, but so has Rankin too. Indeed, the city seems almost more alive than the inspector himself, even though most of its tales concern death. The mortality of someone very close to Rebus is brought into question, someone who seems larger than life, and someone with a lot more vitality than Rebus, say... I think one of the problems with Rebus is that he's so hard to picture, and as the TV producers have probably found, so very hard to cast. Rebus seems more thing than man, hard to make out from the shadows (not a pop reference). I see that Rankin's new novel is called 'The Falls' - will Rebus ride the Reichenbach, locked in mortal combat with his Moriarty, in the city where Doyle learnt from Bell? Has Ian Rankin grown tired of his creation? Or has he just developed a new obsession for the music of Mark E. Smith?
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Summary: If only he could write just wee bit faster
Review: First, a caveat: I am a die-hard Ian Rankin fan, eagerly snapping up anything he writes the minute I can find it available. If you are familiar with Rankin's wonderfully layered John Rebus, then by all means indulge in his newest title. Replete with political machinations, the basic storytelling is flawless--a great multiple murder mystery! If you are unfamiliar with Rankin's work, some of the nuances of shifting relationships may be lost on you, and that would be a shame. Rebus's complexity is such that over the course of the books featuring him, he becomes better known and more self-destructive with each new title. This is not the Rankin book to start with, but for those who have been interested in Rebus's faltering romantic life and, more importantly, his position at work and on-going thorn in Cafferty's side, the changing dynamics do not fail to satisfy.
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Summary: A Book that is Dark, Brooding and Forbidding and Very Alive
Review: Hard-drinking, hard-smoking, divorced Edinburgh cop DI John Rebus is a man who does things his way as he moves through the brooding city of Edinburgh, searching for both his own lost soul and the criminals who lurk in its dark places. DI Derek Linford, in contrast, does things the boss's way, much to Rebus's chagrin. Both are seconded to the police liaison team for the new Scottish Parliament at Queensberry House when a corpse is found hidden behind a fireplace in one of the parliament buildings. From the condition of the body, it appears that it's been there a long time, years, decades. A few days later the body of Roddy Grieve, a Labor Party candidate for a seat in the new parliament, is found on the grounds. Grieve comes from a well-known Scottish family. His mother is a famous artist, his brother is a Tory MP, his sister is an ex-supermodel married to an ageing rock star and there is another brother who went missing 20 years ago. Sniffing about for clues as only he can, Rebus comes to suspect the body in the fireplace may be connected to Grieve's murder. Meanwhile, Rebus's former partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, is driving home one evening when she happens to see a homeless man leap to his death from a bridge. Following up, she discovers that the supposedly poor and destitute man had over £400,000 in a building society account. He also had the same name as the man whose remains were found behind that fireplace. Add to the above the escalating violence of a serial rapist who targets women in singles clubs and, as if that isn't enough, Rebus must face the unexpected prison release of his old nemesis, Edinburgh crime boss Big Ger Cafferty, whose interest in Rebus isn't exactly friendly. And through all this, Rebus has to work alongside Linford, a paper pusher on the fast track to promotion. Little of modern Edinburgh has escaped Rankin's attention here. In fact, one might mistake this excellent novel as a travel guide about where not to go when visiting there. However, there is hope in this book, too. It's just that sometimes it's just a little hard to find, especially when Rankin writes about, corruption, homelessness and despair as if he's been there and seen it all. Yes, this is a dark book. It's also a book that stands apart from others in the genre. It's the kind of book the others aspire to. Haley Lawford, SV Cheerleader Too
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Summary: Rankin (and Rebus) at his best
Review: I am a late-blooming Ian Rankin fan. Until being directed to him (by amazon.com) last year I didn't know the pleasure. Rankin, and authors like him (John D. MacDonald, Martin Cruz Smith), are the reason I read. Complex, but very human, well-layered characters that strike a chord inside. I also love mysteries, and all of Rankin's Rebus books are great credits to the genre. "Set in Darkness" is a multiple murder mystery, 'done' to the max. If you like murder mysteries, this book is an excellent choice. If you are fascinated by characters with depth, breadth, and all those nasty human traits, to go with your appetite for mystery, go back to the beginning ("Knots and Crosses") and read them all...it will make "Set in Darkness" all the more satisfying when you get to it.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreary stuff
Review: I consider myself a major fan of detective fiction worshipping the likes of Carr, Stout, Queen, Christie etc.Ian Rankin has been touted as one of the finest crime writers around but after this maudlin item I am left wondering why. Rebus is in my opinion a poor quality detective spending too much time mooning around the wrong end of a whisky bottle and giving us insights into his tortured personal life. Let's have more detection and less social conscience salving. I give this book 1 star only because zero doesn't appear to be an option!
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Summary: What a Book- What a Series!!!
Review: I heard that Ian Rankin was a very good writer, but I never picked up any of his books to read. That was my mistake. "Set in Darkness" is the second Rankin book that I have read, and I am now convinced that he is one of the best crime/detective/mystery writers out there. "Set in Darkness" was a true pleasure to read. The plot was intricate and well-conconstructed, the setting (Edinburgh) was enchanting, and the characters were clearly drawn and they were fascinating. The only drawback is the Scottish colloquillisms and slang terms that Rankin uses. They are a bit hard to follow at times, but this is a minor inconvenience. John Rebus, the main character, is as good as they come. Put Rankin on your "A" list of authors- you'll not be disappointed.
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