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A review by taetris
The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin
3.0
John Rebus is a Detective Inspector in Edinburgh, his partner Siobhan is a Detective Sergeant. Other characters include the gangster Gerard Cafferty, the Councillor Tench, the G8 summit in Scotland with its accompanying demos in 2005 and the London bombings, also in 2005.
While Siobhans parents are in Scotland for the demonstrations and living in a tent, Siobhan and Rebus are working a murder case. The victim is an ex-con who did time for rape. At Auchterrader, in the woods, police find a "Clootie Well", with bits of clothing hanging on branches. One of the pieces of clothing is easily traced to the murder victim/rapist, and the other bits of clothing point to two other murders.
At the same time, at a high-level dinner in Edinburgh, the MP Ben Webster falls from the battlements of the castle to his death. The special branch police who is there for the G8 term it a suicide. Siobhans parents make friends with a woman called Santal at the demo. When Siobhans mother is hit in the face during the chaos of the demo, Siobhan thinks it was riot police and becomes obsessed with finding out who it was.
Because their boss wants the murder investigation to be on ice for the G8 and the two of them continue regardless, they are both suspended, but continue investigating. Siobhan finds out that her mother was hit by a local troublemaker and is enraged enough to get into bed with the gangster Cafferty in order to get to the culprit. Cafferty, for his part, wants Councillor Tench brought low. Tench is murdered, but not because of Cafferty or Siobhan, but because of a jilted lover.
In the reveal at the end it turns out that Santal is actually an undercover cop and also Ben Websters sister. On of the three murdered men from the Clootie Well assaulted and killed their mother and she killed him for it, proceeding to kill two more men (scumbags, in her view), to obscure the motive and make police think it is a serial killer. The special branch unit has been protecting her all this time.
I didn't really get along with Rankins writing style; I found it rather abrupt and a view more verbs and complete sentences wouldn't have gone amiss.
The plot was good and made sense in the end, although the suspension seemed a bit of unnecessary drama.
Rebus seems and interesting character, and you can somehow feel the proceeding 15 books in the series (though I havn't read them) because he just seems to have so much history.
While Siobhans parents are in Scotland for the demonstrations and living in a tent, Siobhan and Rebus are working a murder case. The victim is an ex-con who did time for rape. At Auchterrader, in the woods, police find a "Clootie Well", with bits of clothing hanging on branches. One of the pieces of clothing is easily traced to the murder victim/rapist, and the other bits of clothing point to two other murders.
At the same time, at a high-level dinner in Edinburgh, the MP Ben Webster falls from the battlements of the castle to his death. The special branch police who is there for the G8 term it a suicide. Siobhans parents make friends with a woman called Santal at the demo. When Siobhans mother is hit in the face during the chaos of the demo, Siobhan thinks it was riot police and becomes obsessed with finding out who it was.
Because their boss wants the murder investigation to be on ice for the G8 and the two of them continue regardless, they are both suspended, but continue investigating. Siobhan finds out that her mother was hit by a local troublemaker and is enraged enough to get into bed with the gangster Cafferty in order to get to the culprit. Cafferty, for his part, wants Councillor Tench brought low. Tench is murdered, but not because of Cafferty or Siobhan, but because of a jilted lover.
In the reveal at the end it turns out that Santal is actually an undercover cop and also Ben Websters sister. On of the three murdered men from the Clootie Well assaulted and killed their mother and she killed him for it, proceeding to kill two more men (scumbags, in her view), to obscure the motive and make police think it is a serial killer. The special branch unit has been protecting her all this time.
I didn't really get along with Rankins writing style; I found it rather abrupt and a view more verbs and complete sentences wouldn't have gone amiss.
The plot was good and made sense in the end, although the suspension seemed a bit of unnecessary drama.
Rebus seems and interesting character, and you can somehow feel the proceeding 15 books in the series (though I havn't read them) because he just seems to have so much history.