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Content snapshot
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Violence
A lot
A prison murder investigation; Rebus is himself an inmate; prison violence throughout
Language
Some
Some strong language
Sexual Content
Barely any
Mild content
Substance Use
Some
Prison drinking; the inside world has its own substance economy
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The specific inversion of having a detective in the position of the people he usually investigates; the prison as a world with its own hierarchy and rules
What this book is about
John Rebus has been convicted and is serving time in HM Prison Edinburgh. When a murder occurs inside — a high-profile inmate killed in a way that Rebus suspects involves connections to the outside — he cannot stop being a detective, even from inside a cell. Ian Rankin's twenty-third Rebus novel is the most formally original of the series: Rebus as inmate rather than investigator, his authority reversed, his usual leverage gone. The question of how he investigates without his normal institutional tools gives the novel its particular tension.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
twenty-third Rebus novel; Rebus is in prison
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