Standing in Another Man's Grave (Inspector Rebus, #18) by Ian Rankin

Feb 22, 2013 Bettie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, published-2012, winter-20122013, eye-scorcher, mystery-thriller, series, britain-scotland, edinburgh, dog-steals-the-show

A Nutty NUUT Novel.

Title is a mondegreen*. Strapline: Rebus is Back.

RIP Jackie Leven

Opening to Prologue: He'd made sure he wasn't standing too near the open grave.

There's Siobhan; oh look, there's Cafferty too...

The Fox intro: (Page 60)...

"I was talking to someone from Complaints..."

The Complaints: meaning Internal Affairs. 'Fox?' Rebus guessed. 'I see him sliming his way around HQ.'

*MONDEGREEN ETYMOLOGY:
Coined by author Sylvia Wright when she misinterpreted the line "laid him on the green" as...more

A Nutty NUUT Novel.

Title is a mondegreen*. Strapline: Rebus is Back.

RIP Jackie Leven

Opening to Prologue: He'd made sure he wasn't standing too near the open grave.

There's Siobhan; oh look, there's Cafferty too...

The Fox intro: (Page 60)...

"I was talking to someone from Complaints..."

The Complaints: meaning Internal Affairs. 'Fox?' Rebus guessed. 'I see him sliming his way around HQ.'

*MONDEGREEN ETYMOLOGY:
Coined by author Sylvia Wright when she misinterpreted the line "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen" in the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray". Earliest documented use: 1954.

"The girl with colitis goes by" for "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds".

USAGE:
"Since I live in Thailand, the most meaningful mondegreen for me was my own mishearing of a line from The Jam's Eton Rifles. Instead of the correct 'What chance do you have against a tie and a crest?', for years I heard 'What chance do you have against a Thai in a dress?'"
Richard Watson Todd; Much Ado about English; Nicholas Brealey Publishing; May 1, 2007.

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Dec 23, 2012 M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Peter Robinson once told me that the superlative Ian Rankin would not let Inspector Rebus just fade away. Seems Mr Robinson called it correctly. What a treat to have Rebus back again Nov 6th.

Finally done! Thankfully, those 2 words do not apply to John Rebus.
He's back and with all his idiosyncratic, defiant & brilliant behaviours intact.

Hated to see this book end. Hoping against hope that Mr Rankin will not allow him to rest too long.

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Nov 30, 2012 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-mt-bookpile

The title is a mondegreen - Rebus has misheard Jackie Leven singing "Standing in Another Man's Rain". So what has Rebus been up to since we last saw him? He's been working for SCRU, Lothian and Borders version of the Cold Case Squad (if you watch "New Tricks" on PBS, this is them... only without the camaraderie or the close rate. or the nice DCI leading the unit.) There's the possibility the unit will be closed because there's Crown office that does the same work, but the mandatory retirement ag...more The title is a mondegreen - Rebus has misheard Jackie Leven singing "Standing in Another Man's Rain". So what has Rebus been up to since we last saw him? He's been working for SCRU, Lothian and Borders version of the Cold Case Squad (if you watch "New Tricks" on PBS, this is them... only without the camaraderie or the close rate. or the nice DCI leading the unit.) There's the possibility the unit will be closed because there's Crown office that does the same work, but the mandatory retirement age from the police has been lifted, so those currently retired can reapply. Rebus, of course, is interested because who is Rebus if he's not working?

Enter Nina Hazlitt, mother of Sally, who disappeared on Hogamanay 1999. Yes, it's now 2012. No, there's been nothing done on the case since. But several years ago, a very nice DI working for SCRU, Gregor Magrath, listened to her and she's checking in on the case. Not only that, she's got a theory that there's a serial killer out there because there are two other girls who went missing along the same road Sally was one - and now there's a third, "live" case, Annette McKie. Surely there's a connection? And that's all Rebus needs to start investigating the old cases and insert himself into the new one.

The new one is being investigated by a unit led by DCI James Page (insert your favorite Led Zep joke here - Rebus often does), seconded by Siobhan Clarke. Siobhan has started to really make her way in the force, partly because she's under Page's wing and partly because she's no longer under Rebus'. She does have a slight soft spot for her old mentor, however, and lets him in on the case... do I really need to go on?

So, where's the tie-in to Malcom Fox and The Complaints? Fox has amassed quiet the file on Rebus, determined to undermine his reentry to Lothian and Borders; he even stoops to some surveillance (phyisical and phone taps) to prove that Rebus and Ger Cafferty were frenemies (why else would Cafferty have avoided jail so often? and why else would Rebus have saved Cafferty's life in ICU?) not enemies. This thread is mostly off-stage, with the occasional appearance - or warning to Siobhan that she should Stay Far Away from Rebus. By the end, however, Fox has been convinced that his crusade is personal, not professional (based on their history when Fox was in uniform decades earlier).

That's the big disappointment for me: I would have loved more interaction between Fox and Rebus. It's clear which child is Rankin's favorite, to the detriment of the book. My hope is that the next book (will Rebus rejoin the force? it's left unclear at the end) will show them together more, even if Fox is dogging Rebus' footsteps.(less)

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Apr 25, 2013 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-noir

I just enjoy these, though every now and then I get a twinge that old Rebus really is in a bit of a rut with the whole grumpy alcoholic outlaw cop thing. But perfect hospital reading.

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Jan 23, 2013 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

YESSSSS - REBUS IS BACK.

Rebus, retired but on loan from SCRU (a group of former detectives looking into cold cases) happens into an investigation of multiple MisPers, women gone missing along the A9 highway. Working partly within channels and mostly outside channels, Rebus is as bull-headed and irascible as usual as he digs deeper and finds links others have missed. Meanwhile he is being investigated by Complaints (Internal Affairs).

I am finding I like this return to police procedural without th...more

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Jun 08, 2013 Gavin Broom rated it 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to years of ignoring my mother's recommendations of how wonderful an author Ian Rankin is, I come to the Rebus canon a little late in the day. More fool me. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the book and the way it was written and despite there being some umpteen previous books in the series, I don't feel I lost out on much by jumping in at this stage.

Rebus is perhaps a bit of a stereotypical weathered and beaten cop who doesn't play by the rules, but he's so engaging it's hard not to...more

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May 11, 2013 John Brooke rated it 3 of 5 stars

I grew tired of DI John Rebus – too drunk, too cynical, too incapable of being happy. So I missed a few of the later books. I decided to give this latest one a try. Because I had been so long away from the series, I thought (hoped) maybe there’d be a change. There was. If you like Rebus, I’m sure you like this one. If you did not like Rebus, you might find yourself warming to him a little as he grows long in the tooth.

We find Rebus working as a CIVILIAN in a small cold-cases unit. As mentioned,...more I grew tired of DI John Rebus – too drunk, too cynical, too incapable of being happy. So I missed a few of the later books. I decided to give this latest one a try. Because I had been so long away from the series, I thought (hoped) maybe there’d be a change. There was. If you like Rebus, I’m sure you like this one. If you did not like Rebus, you might find yourself warming to him a little as he grows long in the tooth.

We find Rebus working as a CIVILIAN in a small cold-cases unit. As mentioned, I missed a few; I am not sure if was pushed out or left of his own volition… At any rate, Rebus is half-way back. And older, a bit more mellow. Not quite as hammered every single night. But cold cases are frustrating and Rebus has re-applied to the force.

But Malcom Fox of the Complaints (Internal Affairs; the focus of some other Rankin books) is pushing for his application to be refused because they know Rebus has regular drinks with his ex-nemesis Big Ger Cafferty – also semi-retired, but still with an evil gleam in his eye and friends wherever he needs them. Thus the mythic aspect of the Rebus stories continues to flow along in step with the procedural reality of police work and the dreary realism of a solitary cop who drinks.

When a mother comes in to the office looking for the former (retired) head of the Cold Cases unit, she finds Rebus instead. Her daughter has been missing and presumed dead for a dozen years. But she is still persisting, bothering cops, talking to media, determined to achieve a definitive status on the case. Rebus bites, and ends up establishing a link between that missing woman and five others – a photo of a stretch of highway running north toward Inverness. This find dovetails with the current disappearance of the teenage daughter of Frank Hammel’s girlfriend - Hammel being another Edinburgh crime boss. Rebus is seconded to that investigation and finds himself working with ex-colleague DI Siobhan Clarke. (And listening to Cafferty with different ears.)

I enjoyed the rapport between Clarke and Rebus. Also, in this book I finally understood that Rebus succeeds because he is a canny listener. He hears things from all quarters, friends and foes and suspects, and infers meaning other have not - and heads in the right, albeit messy direction… This case involves much driving around northern Scotland – a lot like in Ake Edwardson's recent Sail of Stone. (The Swede’s descriptions of the towns and land are more in-depth and poetic than Rankin’s.)

3 stars. As mentioned, I am already leery of Rebus as a character. More to the literary point, the reader in me does not need all the “naturalistic” detail Rankin always provides – I prefer more cop psychology artistically rendered, less description of glasses on tables, messy floors of police cars, etc.
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May 03, 2013 Andreasoldier rated it 3 of 5 stars

Rankin is one my favorite authors, and Rebus a favorite character.
Forced by age into retirement, the one-time inspector has been hired as a civilian to take a fresh look at cold cases with other retired coppers like himself working under a management-type cop, who knows more about filing paperwork than fingerprints.
Then Nina Hazlitt works into the station. Her daughter disappeared 10 years ago on a rural road leading to the tip of Scotland. No trace, no sightings, no bodies. Rebus listens, and...more Rankin is one my favorite authors, and Rebus a favorite character.
Forced by age into retirement, the one-time inspector has been hired as a civilian to take a fresh look at cold cases with other retired coppers like himself working under a management-type cop, who knows more about filing paperwork than fingerprints.
Then Nina Hazlitt works into the station. Her daughter disappeared 10 years ago on a rural road leading to the tip of Scotland. No trace, no sightings, no bodies. Rebus listens, and then discovers another cold case where the girl disappeared on the same road. His discovery leads to another similar case. Three girls, same stretch of lonely road. Hazlitt is convinced a serial killer is work, and Rebus doesn't believe in coincidences.
The case takes Rebus back to his old precinct, where becomes a target of sorts for his old foe Big Ger Cafferty, fresh from jail and thankful that Rebus bent enough to do CPR and save him. He keeps dropping by to talk to Rebus, looking for info that help Cafferty work out his place with young man who took over his turf. Two aging men, no longer kings of their hills, who nevertheless hope to reach the summit again.
That connection also puts Rebus in the crosshairs of by-the-rules Malcom Fox, a recovering alcoholic (the MC in Rankin's new series). A new ruling on age is allowing Rebus to reapply to the force, but Fox, who works for The Complaints (Internal Affairs and Ethics), believes Rebus crosses too many lines, drinks too much and is too cozy with Big Ger.
The case also has Rebus working again with Siobhan Clarke; Fox warns him not to bring her down to his level, while her lover, Rebus's boss, can't stand Rebus. Clarke must walk a minefield between all three.
Rebus is imperfect as ever: he lives on fast food, coffee, alcohol, and whisky, but doesn't bother his gut, which always seems to lead him in the right direction. But now he has sense of mortality, and it's obvious.
Maybe the mystery is a little obvious toward the end, but what it wondrous is the tension Rankin keeps between his characters. The almost father-daughter one between Clarke and Rebus, the enmity between Rebus and Fox, Rebus and his boss, Rebus and Cafferty.

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Apr 05, 2013 Ware rated it 5 of 5 stars

Rebus is no longer a cop. However he is working as a civilian employee in cold case. He is approached by the mother of a long-missing girl, who asserts that her daughter may be the first victim of an as yet undetected serial killer, whose missing victims are associated with a major Scottish thoroughfare, the A-9.

Broadly construing his cold case mandate, Rebus soon finds himself in the middle of a real and current investigation. Along the way he interacts with the gangster Big Ger Cafferty, whose...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Moira Russell added it

Shelves: ebook, on-the-kindle, gifts

Well, maybe if I say "fuck" a lot in this review Amazon won't seize it and lead it to an evil digital dungeon. ....wait, I say "fuck" all the time anyway.

A very enjoyable way to kill an afternoon. Not a good entry point for anyone not familiar with the series, but hell, it's the eighteenth book. For the rest of us, it's a nice installment.

Rankin, never very good with female characters, serves us up a weepy stalker in this one. I was hoping Rebus would drown her in a bucket of her own tears, but...more Well, maybe if I say "fuck" a lot in this review Amazon won't seize it and lead it to an evil digital dungeon. ....wait, I say "fuck" all the time anyway.

A very enjoyable way to kill an afternoon. Not a good entry point for anyone not familiar with the series, but hell, it's the eighteenth book. For the rest of us, it's a nice installment.

Rankin, never very good with female characters, serves us up a weepy stalker in this one. I was hoping Rebus would drown her in a bucket of her own tears, but I hoped in vain. The book earns a major DING and DING again from me for making Siobhan and a high-ranking female colleague have a bad case of the Stupids, i.e. they're Not Rebus. (This is why people call me a bitch feminist.) (Then again, to be fair to Rankin, everyone in a series like this is Stupid because they're Not Rebus, so.) Major bonus points for Rebus just being Rebus. The murder and indeed the motive are really glossed over, and the romanticization of the Scottish Thugs 4 Lyf continues, but it's awesome to see Rebus just being Rebus again, which is sometimes all you want in a series.

Some dude named Fox whom I also wanted to drown in a bucket apparently visits from a less successful series Rankin is trying to launch, but fortunately only for four-five chapters total. Remember the Bond movie where Judi Dench dressed down -- which one was it then, Timothy Dalton? -- at the beginning and then he went on Bonding his way all over the movie anyway? It's like that. Fox is foiled, of course, not just by being a berk but by Not Being Rebus. The supposed theme of the book is dinosaurs of the past dying off and a newer generation moving up and moving on, except, well, Rebus. He half-heartedly cuts back on Silk Cuts and trades his IPA for Irn-Bru, but his poor physical shape is emphasized throughout the novel, his heart banging alarmingly at times. It doesn't matter, though: the most unkillable character in modern literature, after the immortal vampire, is the murder dick. I think when Christie died, at the end of his series Poirot was something like eighty-five and yet still looked forty. Twitter and cell phone snaps enter the picture, but what solves it is good old-fashioned flatfoot footwork by Rebus, because, well, what else are you reading the series for?*

The musical selection is, as always, pretty great and the title mondegreen is woven in very well. If the publishers could wrest rights away from the music industry to include a CD or soundtrack link in each book they'd make a mint. (I seem to remember Rankin had a book playlist on last.fm a while ago? but I doubt it still works.) I predict this book will be amazing to American readers because Rebus damnear puts a girdle round Scotland in forty minutes, and here that wouldn't get you halfway through Montana. Rebus' enduring, dangerous, manipulative-on-both-sides relationship with Cafferty is very good. It'd be great to see another book where they really clash.

Nobody would call Rankin a great writer (well, I wouldn't take them seriously if they did) but certain images are haunting: the rained-on full grave at the beginning, a pale hand barely visible at night reaching out of a shallow grave deep in a forest, ghosts of missing and dead girls haunting CCTV footage and cell phones....Despite the indefatigable nature of Rebus, whatever immortality he has depends on his fictional status: his unreality. Whereas for the rest of us, whatver's making us stand in or just above the open grave, death sooner or later shoves us all down into it. And that's not even a crime.

*Colin Dexter cemented his curmudgeonly status once and for all by killing off Morse, which I applaud intellectually but I've only been able to read that book and see that series (in which John Thaw was phenomenal) just the once.(less)

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Mar 23, 2013 Karen McMillan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime

Scottish writer Ian Rankin brings back, after a five year break, with his ever-popular character Detective Inspector John Rebus. Working on cold cases that involve people who have disappeared in his typical confrontational style, he quickly finds himself in trouble with the Internal Affairs Unit, who expect their officers to play by the rules. Malcolm Fox is in charge of this unit and fans of Ian Rankin will delight that these two very different characters get to clash in this well-crafted novel...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Kathy Davie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery, history

Eighteenth in the Detective Inspector Rebus mystery series revolving around ex-DI Rebus in Edinburgh while being third in the Inspector Malcolm Fox mystery series revolving around Rebus' nemesis in the Complaints.

My Take
I was so not expecting Rankin to pop up with another Rebus book...and I am absolutely thrilled that he did. Rebus had retired in Exit Music , 17, back in 2007, and Rankin has him popping back up as a civilian working with the cold case squad. There's just a hint of possibility th...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Monica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: british, crime-and-or-evil

Terrific return for Rebus - he's still a cantankerous iconoclast, playing by his own rules and nobody else's, and relentless in searching out the truth, even if the result is not always satisfying.

He's a civilian now, working for the Cold Case unit and applying for readmission to the Force, since the retirement age has been lifted. The unit gets a call from a woman who says her daughter's disappearance in 1999 is tied to the recent disappearance of a young woman, and to other similar incidents...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Jean rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

John Rebus, where have you been all my life? I have never read Ian Rankin, but tried his newest, Standing in Another Man's Grave, and I really liked it. John Rebus is sort-of Retired from the Edinburgh police department, working cold cases. A woman looking for news of her daughter starts him on a quest for a killer.
Rebus drinks too much, is unorthodox, and he associates with bad guys (drug lords), many connections to get information. The police department wants to get rid of him, but he manages...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

If I were less of a curmudgeon, I would give this book five stars, but I try not to practice grade inflation, particularly in this genre. Having said that, I was very excited when I saw Rebus was back. Ian Rankin gets big gratitude for bringing us more of Rebus. And with mysteries, thrillers and detective stories, I tend to read them like they are crack. I stop answering the door or phones, tend to report a queasy stomach to others with whom I had scheduled activities. I check on my Diet Dr. Pep...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Donna Brown rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ian Rankins Rebus series is one of the most popular mystery writers internationally, though he is not that well known in the US. He is my favorite, and Rebus is my favorite detective, bar none, so my rating is probably higher than yours would be.

As always, Rebus' life has become more miserable than in the last book. He has been forced to retire and now is working in a cold case group. He misses the murder squad and his long-time partner Siobhan, which for several decades made up most of his life...more Ian Rankins Rebus series is one of the most popular mystery writers internationally, though he is not that well known in the US. He is my favorite, and Rebus is my favorite detective, bar none, so my rating is probably higher than yours would be.

As always, Rebus' life has become more miserable than in the last book. He has been forced to retire and now is working in a cold case group. He misses the murder squad and his long-time partner Siobhan, which for several decades made up most of his life.

Rebus still walks around with his finger raised to authority, and they hate it just as much as always. He's the kind of guy that many hate because he is brilliant at what he does, and they are not. He seems to be drinking a little less than in the past, though he still sleeps many nights in his old armchair looking out on the streets of Edinburgh. Speaking of which, every time I hear Edinburgh mentioned, I automatically wonder how Rebus is getting along, before I remember that he's not a real person.

Mr. Rankin stopped writing this series for about seven or eight years, and I was bereft. My only hope was that all his other readers would find his thriller novels a big bust like I did. Finally, in January, my prayers were answered when Rankin buckled and a new Rebus novel was released.

I'm never happier than when riding around in Rebus' head. He's a darkly funny man who doesn't respect much but has a deep sense of justice. I was just reviewing another detective, Jonathon Rabb's Detective Hoffner. Hoffner solves puzzles; Rebus seeks justice. Rebus and Hoffner both see that unsavory characters are just as complex as their own bosses. There is no black and white.

I don't think this is the best Rebus book. I've read every one twice and can't really pick out a favorite. The one that sticks in my mind the most is The Hanging Garden, but there are others I remember whose names I can't sort out. Pick any one, and you might get hooked and ride around Scotland in Rebus' head, too.(less)

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Feb 10, 2013 Larraine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ian Rankin is the writer that so many younger writers - especially Scottish writers - talk about as someone who got them interested in writing crime fiction. Whenever I read one of his books, I finished it both satisfied and left with an uneasy feeling that I missed some important nuances. In "Exit Music" we read what was apparently his famous detective, John Rebus', final case before going into retirement. Rankin also recently introduced Malcolm Fox, a very different figure than Rebus. Unlike R...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Mal Warwick rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Journey to the Dark Side in Present-Day Scotland

Maverick detective John Rebus, recently retired, is trying to get back on the police force in Edinburgh, but not everyone is happy about that — especially a detective named Malcolm Fox, who heads up the equivalent of the department’s Internal Affairs office.

“‘The file on you,’ Fox said eventually, ‘goes back to the 1970s. In fact, to call it a file is doing it an injustice; it takes up one whole shelf.’

“‘I’ve been called into the headmaster’s off...more A Journey to the Dark Side in Present-Day Scotland

Maverick detective John Rebus, recently retired, is trying to get back on the police force in Edinburgh, but not everyone is happy about that — especially a detective named Malcolm Fox, who heads up the equivalent of the department’s Internal Affairs office.

“‘The file on you,’ Fox said eventually, ‘goes back to the 1970s. In fact, to call it a file is doing it an injustice; it takes up one whole shelf.’

“‘I’ve been called into the headmaster’s office a few times,’ Rebus conceded.”

So it goes in the topsy-turvy life of Ian Rankin’s thoroughly unconventional detective. Rebus is brilliant, though he operates astride the fine line between what’s legal and what’s not, and slips over it from time to time for the sake of getting results. Not only does he close nearly all his cases, but he’s also the only person on the force who has ever managed to put away Edinburgh’s notorious crime boss, Gerald “Big Ger” Cafferty.

In Standing in Another Man’s Grave, Rebus is now working as a civilian employee of the department in a unit devoted to investigating cold cases. The work is unrewarding, and Rebus sees it only as a stepping-stone to getting back into active duty again. Then along comes a chance encounter with a woman who claims to see a pattern in the disappearance over the course of a decade of a number of young women along the A9 highway leading north from Edinburgh to the coast. As Rebus looks into her story, he begins to suspect that she’s right — and, for some reason Rebus finds mysterious, he’s the first person on the force to give her the time of day. To do justice to the investigation, Rebus manages to draw his former partner, Siobhan Clarke, now a Detective Inspector, into the case. Soon other detectives pile on in the increasingly fraught investigation as it moves forward, grabbing headlines throughout Britain.

Standing in Another Man’s Grave is the 18th and most recently published of Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels. It’s also, I’ve learned, the third in a new series of books about Malcolm Fox.

This is my second venture into the work of Ian Rankin. Previously, I’d read only Doors Open, which I thoroughly disliked. The dimensionality of the characters in this book compared with the overdrawn caricatures of Doors Open made it, for me, a much more satisfying read. For what it’s worth, Rankin is, reportedly, Britain’s best-selling author of crime novels.(less)

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Jan 28, 2013 Mark Gilroy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've been reading Ian Rankin's John Rebus novels for close to a decade and have always had a love-hate relationship with this Edinburgh detective. I'm not alone. Rebus's cynical, impulsive, abrasive, self-destructive ways can play like fingernails on a chalkboard, making it hard for all but a few of the other characters to tolerate, much less "like" John - (poor DS Siobhan Clarke, how does she put up with him?). But despite Rebus' expertly drawn flaws, the curmudgeon gets his hooks in you. And i...more I've been reading Ian Rankin's John Rebus novels for close to a decade and have always had a love-hate relationship with this Edinburgh detective. I'm not alone. Rebus's cynical, impulsive, abrasive, self-destructive ways can play like fingernails on a chalkboard, making it hard for all but a few of the other characters to tolerate, much less "like" John - (poor DS Siobhan Clarke, how does she put up with him?). But despite Rebus' expertly drawn flaws, the curmudgeon gets his hooks in you. And it becomes obvious, anyone who tries as hard as Rebus to prove he doesn't care about anyone or anything has to be hiding something ... like how much he cares.

When Rankin retired Rebus in Exit Music - the 17th Rebus novel - and introduced a new Edinburgh character (Malcolm Fox) in (and of) The Complaints (think Internal Affairs in U.S. police terms) - it felt like a huge loss to me. Rebus hadn't run his course - and of course, Big Ger Cafferty, king of the Edinburgh underworld, was out of jail and needed someone to keep a careful - and obsessive - eye on him. There are lead characters that grow more and more weary with each passing novel - but Rebus was worn out and washed up when we first met him. If the chain smoking hadn't killed him yet, why put him out to pasture? Maybe Rankin planned for retirement to do to Rebus what Cafferty considered doing countless times but never did. (Grudging respect? A sense of kinship?)

I also knew I'd miss the old school rock and roll or blues music suggestions. It's always been a bonus to read through what's on Rebus' playlist in each novel, though he still favors his LPs with the comfortable hiss and pops between tracks over CDs or digital music (horrors!) for his late night melancholy as he looks out the window of his flat, a quickly disappearing bottle of Lagavulin at his side.

Standing In Another Man's Grave was a fabulous vehicle to bring Rebus back where he belongs, in the middle of a bloody crime scene. Interesting, I thought Rankin drew a bit much from a theme and process found in my least favorite Rebus novel, Fleshmarket Alley - (Rebus took a strong and clear and moral political stance, which I thought was a out of character - he normally couldn't be bothered with what the bloody politicians were up to unless it was murder). But having him work as a civilian investigator on cold case files - including a missing person case that may have multiple and current connections - creates the conditions for a triumphant return - even if his boss wishes he would crawl back under a rock.

I would note that Rankin has done as good or better of a job keeping Rebus true to form as any series novelist. That's why reviewing an individual book doesn't seem as important to me as asking if Rebus is really back. Is he?

He's still loathed and feared by colleagues and criminals alike. He still won't give you the time of day unless you have something he needs. He's still the character I hate to love or love to hate most in my commercial crime reading. But even if he has one foot in the grave - or both in another man's grave - he's back, and that's what matters.(less)

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Jan 26, 2013 Stephanie Patterson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had the great pleasure of meeting Ian Rankin several years ago at a Bouchercon. I was expecting at best a brief nod after I told him how much enjoyed his books but instead he said, “Oh, sit doon, sit doon” and we actually had a chance to talk. So I may be a bit biased in favor of his books.
This book marks the return of John Rebus who is now working on cold cases but manages to get himself involved in a current case because a recent disppearance of a woman seems to be part of a pattern in whi...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Yvonne rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is an excellent Rebus book. For me one of the very best. What can I say? If you like mysteries where the leading protagonist is a flawed human being and a great copper who doesn't follow the rules but gets results, then John Rebus is for you.
With a sense of humour, old fashioned detective work, few friends, lots of enemies, and known in every pub in Edinburgh, he marches to his own beat. He lives alone with his vinyl records, his whiskey and his mistakes, and is wise enough to know he'll n...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Joanna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

I hadn't read a Rebus novel since "Strip Jack," which I felt was a bit underwhelming, but this novel is a perfect reintroduction to the character. John Rebus, who has always been a curmudgeon, has gradually become a fossilized remnant, a sometimes embarrassing reminder, of the old ways of police work. He's been pushed into retirement because of his age, but clings to the fringes of the department by working as a civilian in the cold case bureau.

The thing that makes this book work is that its a...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-crime-detection

STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE. (2013). Ian Rankin. ****.
I have to admit up front that all through this novel I was mostly at sea as to who all the characters were. There were just too many of them. That aside, I’m sure I missed a lot of the smaller details of the plot, but I plodded on anyway. Rankin has the ability to capture his reader by his ears. You are soon pulled into his stories and can visualize his characters in the act of conversation or of thinking out loud. When Rebus is approach...more STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE. (2013). Ian Rankin. ****.
I have to admit up front that all through this novel I was mostly at sea as to who all the characters were. There were just too many of them. That aside, I’m sure I missed a lot of the smaller details of the plot, but I plodded on anyway. Rankin has the ability to capture his reader by his ears. You are soon pulled into his stories and can visualize his characters in the act of conversation or of thinking out loud. When Rebus is approached by a woman who is following up on the disappearance of her daughter years ago, he is suddenly dragged into a case he knew nothing about. Her daughter, a teenager at the time, went missing five or six years ago, with no word since. Mother had been bugging the police to do more than they had over the years, and now brought evidence that her daughter was not the only one to disappear along the specific motorway out of town. As far as mother could prove – using internet searches – at least two other young women were potential victims of some kind of crime in the same area. They were all missing and never heard from again. At the time, Rebus, still retired from active duty, was working as a civilian adjunct to the newly created “cold case” group. He begins to take up the details of this case, and, as more and more evidence piled up, to convince the leaders of his group that crimes had been committed. Most of the problems in this book, though, concerned the internal warfare that was going on in the management of the department. Rebus represented the old school of detecting. He also represented the old style policeman – the kind that drank too much, smoked too much, and based a lot of his efforts on ‘hunches.’ As the case develops, we ultimately learn that there have been five women who have disappeared over the course of several years. Rebus ultimately provides most of the work that is required to solve this crime, but uncovers lots of negative politics active within the department. He also teaches some of the younger members of the group that crimes of this type follow some historical pathways that should be explored right off, in spite of some of the newer technologies that can be brought to bear on them. As usual, Rebus provides ample wit in his relations with both his comrades and members of the public in general. Recommended.
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Jan 20, 2013 Gloria Feit rated it 5 of 5 stars

Old soldiers may never die and John Rebus hopefully will never fade away. After a couple of years in retirement he’s back as a civilian consultant on cold cases (which seems to be becoming a trend in resurrecting protagonists in crime fiction). In the course of this work he is informed by the mother of a girl who disappeared many years before that her daughter may have been the first in a series of disappearances ( and presumably murders) along a northern highway (serial murders apparently are b...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Julian Cole rated it 4 of 5 stars

THREE short words on the cover announce the reason for the excitement: “Rebus is back.”
Yes, Rankin has resurrected his sardonic, lovably infuriating Edinburgh cop, who had to retire when he got too old. Now he is haunting the fringes of his old job, working as a civilian assistant in a cold cases unit, still causing trouble much in the way he always did, still valiant in a battered, soured manner; still certain he is right, whatever his bosses say.
The case he is involved in concerns a series of...more

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Dec 29, 2012 L.K. Jay rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime

I and my mother are massive Rankin fans and when I found out that Rebus was back, and that he would be sparring with Malcolm Fox, I pre-ordered this book like a shot.

Rebus is as tricksy as ever and comes up with some great one-liners - I loved the bit where he keeps pinching one of the other officer's staplers! He is also still the brilliant detective and he does whatever it takes to bring the villain to justice. Siobhan is also back, promoted to DI, and she can't help but help out her old frien...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Rob Kitchin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having retired his famous detective a couple of books ago, Ian Rankin places him front and centre in Standing in Another Man’s Grave. It’s a very welcome return in a thoroughly entertaining story. Rankin always scores well on several fronts - characterisation, sense of place, contextualisation, plotting - and it’s no different with this tale, which is layered and complex. Although the main focus is Rebus and the main case under investigation, Rankin does not neglect the host of secondary charact...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Ashleigh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, crime, ebook

Rebus is back. And it's brilliant.

I love Rankin's work, simply because having lived up in Scotland, and been to a lot of mentioned places, I can picture it perfectly and I like being able to imagine it and do the journey with him - especially in a book like this in which you encounter a lot of road time and scenery; little villages and towns. Pitlochry, which features prominently and mentions of places like Tillicoultry (famed for it's furniture warehouse) were family's favourite weekend trips s...more Rebus is back. And it's brilliant.

I love Rankin's work, simply because having lived up in Scotland, and been to a lot of mentioned places, I can picture it perfectly and I like being able to imagine it and do the journey with him - especially in a book like this in which you encounter a lot of road time and scenery; little villages and towns. Pitlochry, which features prominently and mentions of places like Tillicoultry (famed for it's furniture warehouse) were family's favourite weekend trips so I got a lot of my own reminiscing in!

I've not really been a huge fan of Rebus in the past (as in I've read a couple, but I've never felt the need to read them all, I can dip in and dip out), it's just when I do read them I enjoy them. This book I felt was a good restart for Rebus; I don't feel you have to have read the past books to enjoy this one - all you need is a rough idea of him to be drawn in. The whole cold-case unit felt a little like New Tricks without the camaraderie and the close-rate!

This felt a more character driven book rather than plot; which is a little disappointing in a crime novel as for me the crime almost took a back seat. It did, however, have the premise to be brilliant. The conclusion of the book was a little anticlimactic, but in a way it finishing on a loose end is good in the sense that there's indication that there's far more to come. As for the characters they were all renewed - it's easy to pick up who they are without having read many of the prior books. And as for Fox, which I know there's been a lot of debate over his inclusion in this novel, I feel it was a depiction through Rebus' eyes - which doesn't take away the character he was prior to this book; it just adds another perspective.

I hope this isn't the end of Rebus, because should another book come along I think I'd definitely pick it up! My 4/5 is simply because I feel it was left at a loose end - a little underdone!

One last note; I liked the recurring inclusion of Kate Bush! (less)

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Jan 13, 2013 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: librarybooks

‘The harder you look, the more you start to see things – especially when you want to see them.’

John Rebus is back. But no longer as the maverick Detective Inspector Rebus, instead he John Rebus, civilian working with the soon to be disbanded Serious Crime Review Unit (SCRU). Some of his workmates are planning for retirement, while Rebus himself is planning on re-joining the police force.

The novel opens as Rebus is attending the funeral of a colleague. He’s craving a cigarette (some things never...more ‘The harder you look, the more you start to see things – especially when you want to see them.’

John Rebus is back. But no longer as the maverick Detective Inspector Rebus, instead he John Rebus, civilian working with the soon to be disbanded Serious Crime Review Unit (SCRU). Some of his workmates are planning for retirement, while Rebus himself is planning on re-joining the police force.

The novel opens as Rebus is attending the funeral of a colleague. He’s craving a cigarette (some things never change) and his boss is sending him text messages. Back at work, he takes a ‘phone call, and meets Nina Hazlitt. Nina’s daughter Sally went missing from Aviemore on the A9, in 1999, and Nina believes that a number of other disappearances from other towns near the road are linked. Rebus listens: a current missing person case also has links to the same road.

Siobhan Clarke, Rebus’s former protégée, is investigating the current missing person case, and the pair team up on an investigation that involves a lot of travel along the A9. Is there really a link between the cases, and will Rebus manage to solve the case before his superior officers finally lose their patience?

Inspector Malcolm Fox also has a part in this story: the ‘Complaints’ is investigating Rebus, and especially his connections with ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty:
‘I know a cop gone bad when I see one. Rebus has spent so many years crossing the line he's managed to rub it out altogether.’

Rebus is an isolated character in this novel: partly because of the setting and partly because of his anarchic, maverick approach to investigating the case. Times are changing, and not always for the better.

‘John Rebus should be extinct, Clarke. Somehow the Ice Age came and went and left him still swimming around while the rest of us evolved.’

I’ve not yet read all of the Rebus novels, and I’ve yet to read the two Fox novels. It’s a bad habit of mine: reading series out of order. But despite this, I really enjoyed making John Rebus’s acquaintance again. He’s aged, and while he may not have improved with age as the whisky he likes, he still gets results. Do the ends always justify the means? Hmm.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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May 15, 2013 K. East rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel took a lot of reading before the story began to pull me into the book. I was more than half way through before I developed anything like interest in the main character -- Rebus. His character is a more hard-boiled and arrogant detective than I usually am drawn to and my husband says Rankin is one of the author's he read regularly so perhaps he appeals to a more masculine reader. But once the missing persons case started to open up and unfold, I found I enjoyed the book more and even c...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Bringing together Rebus and Fox: genius!	3	10	Jun 11, 2013 06:21am
The Rankin-phile: Read-A-Long?	3	14	Jan 15, 2013 10:06am

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Standing in Another Man's Grave (Inspector Rebus #18)

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