Ian Rankin, Exit Music

It's the season for catarrh! Children are back at school and the supermarkets are selling lots of boxes of cheap tissues and of course, anti-nit shampoo. Today I am feeling rather depleted by a runny nose and cotton wool head. All set off nicely by the dalek voice!

What better comfort then than a hot water bottle and a book that takes you into the alleyways of Edinburgh on the look out for the killer of a Russian Emigre Poet? This story has extra chutzpah too as this is Rebus's last case and like Holmes before him with his nemesis Moriarty, we are not sure if arch enemy 'Big Ger Cafferty' will 'retire' Inspector Rebus indefinitely!

I have always enjoyed the seamless sequencing of Rankin's narratives. I remember reading my first Rebus on a balcony in the Costa del Sol! I had run out of books to read and found Rebus on a rack in a Spanish supermarket close to the infamous Marbella high way littered with hapless road-kill. The relief of having a book to read that was not only in English but was also THRILLING has remained!

For Rankin's Rebus novels move inevitably and without the 'clunky' interventions of many thriller writers. And his ability to create dialogue that is both witty and human is impressive. I know that Rankin loved Stevenson and it is hard not to sense Dickens's influence too with Rankin's involving, nitty gritty interest in the particulars of a city's underbelly.

'Rebus' himself compels as he is characterised through a contradictory collection of 'archaic' cultural references and incisive intelligence that is intuitive and even anarchic. We want him to win, to beat authority and for all his 'awkward' persona, we know he is the best , most tenacious detective since Columbo!

Another chapter beckons! There are advantages

Exit Music

Ian Rankin

Little, Brown, Sep 2008, $24.99

ISBN 9780316057585

For the first time he can remember Edinburgh Police Inspector John Rebus is worried about the future. In ten days, the long time cop is turning sixty, which means mandatory retirement although he does not feel ready to leave the force.

Still, Rebus plans to finish his last cases although he only has ten working days left. His prime investigation is the murder of Russian poet Alexander Todorov; in which he and his associate Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke find no motive, but a horde of odd conspiracies bantered about that include Russian businessmen, Scottish bankers and local politicians rallying behind an independent Scotland. The case turns even more bizarre when a second homicide occurs; the victim taped a recital of Todorov reading his work. Increasingly the inquiry points towards Edinburgh crime boss 'Big Ger' Cafferty, but finding proof to pin two murders on the mobster in under ten days seem impossible.

The investigation takes a back seat to Rebus' final police case before going into forced retirement. Thus, as good as the previous entries are, this may be the most personal as the emotions are high as fans wonder what will their hero do. 'Exit Music' is an excellent complicated police procedural as the great John Rebus works what is his apparent last police case.

Harriet Klausner