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Ian Rankin
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Book
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Publisher | Orion | ||
ISBN | 0752877127 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
Edinburgh is a city steeped in history and tradition, a seat of learning, of elegant living, known as the 'Athens of the North'. But that isn't all. The city's flip-side is a city of grudges, blackmail, violence, greed and fear - where past and present clash and old wounds fester. In any year Detective Inspector John Rebus can expect gang warfare, murder, assault and battery at the very least. In this collection he investigates the hanging of a student actor during the Festival, an arson attack on a bird watcher and the witnessing of an apparent miracle...
Ian Rankin 2006 by Victoria Warren
Review
A GOOD HANGING is one of twelve stories in this book The main story being a Good Hanging which is set in and around the Edinburgh festival time. The story goes, that in days gone by that a criminal was given the chance to run the distance of the Royal Mile from Parliament Square to Hollyrood, a baying crowd on his/her heels. If the criminal reaches the Royal Park before he was caught then he could remain in the park to live out his life. But this was not an authorised hanging, this is a prank that seems to have gone wrong, a fringe artist that didn't mean to do what he has to do.
The other stories are all short but still have a good twist in them. I love these stories and found that yet again while they are short they still have the thrill of the long crime novels that Rebus plays a part in.
This is another great book by one of Britain's finest detective novelist. His home City of Edinburgh is not just tarten tea rooms and cobbled streets of the tourists brochures, but a modern urban place with the full range of criminals and their victims - blackmailers, peeping toms, and more than one kind of murderer. It is a city that gives birth to crimes of passion, accident and long hidden jealousy.
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