Review - EXIT MUSIC, Ian Rankin

Now I know most of my fellow contributors to crime fiction alphabet won't interpret the rules as liberally as I do - but after all rules are meant to be broken and I am after all, travelling. That's my excuse anyway.

And it's only a semantic accident that XIT has an E in front of it!

I read EXIT MUSIC soon after it was published in 2007 and it rated as a 5 for me.

John Rebus is facing his last week in the police force. He will turn 60 in 10 days and is legally required to retire. He has no vision of what he will do in retirement and is determined to work as he's always done, right to the end. Late at night, at the foot of Raeburn Wynd the body of a Russian poet is discovered. So solving this crime will be Rebus' last case.

But there is so much more to be resolved like Rebus' biggest unfinished business is with Big Ger Cafferty. He would dearly like to put Cafferty away forever, but is that going to be a legacy he will leave to DS Siobhan Clarke?

And Shiv has problems of her own. Will she just move into Rebus' job as Detective Inspector and if she does, who will she choose to be her new partner? In a sense this, their last case together, is an important test for her too, made all the more important when DCI McCrae decides that DS Clarke will be in charge of the case, with Rebus as a sort of mentor - if a loose cannon can ever be a mentor.

Rankin manages to bed this case against the issues of real time Scotland, focussing on Scottish independence, an issue that dominated the Scottish elections of 2006.  Not a short read, but certainly an engrossing one. It left me hoping against hope that this isn't the last we see of Rebus!

Inspector Rebus novels - thank you Fantastic Fiction
1. Knots and Crosses (1987)
2. Hide and Seek (1990)
3. Tooth and Nail (1992)
     aka Wolfman
4. Strip Jack (1992)
5. The Black Book (1993)
6. Mortal Causes (1994)
7. Let It Bleed (1995)
8. Black and Blue (1997)
9. The Hanging Garden (1998)
10. Dead Souls (1999)
11. Set in Darkness (2000)
12. The Falls (2001)
13. Resurrection Men (2002)
14. A Question of Blood (2003)
15. Fleshmarket Close (2004)
     aka Fleshmarket Alley
16. The Naming Of The Dead (2006)
17. Exit Music (2007)

Non-Rebus reviews on my blog:
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