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Content snapshot
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Violence
A lot
A torture murder; some sectarian violence; investigation of IRA-connected crime
Language
Some
Strong language in Rankin's Edinburgh register
Sexual Content
Barely any
Mild content
Substance Use
Some
Heavy drinking; Rebus and the pub are inseparable
Emotional Intensity
Some
The way violence imports itself into communities that didn't ask for it; the institutional pressures on Rebus from above
What this book is about
During Edinburgh's famous August festival — when the city swells and the underground vaults beneath the Royal Mile are technically open to tourists — a young man is found tortured and killed in the vaults. The victim has IRA connections. The timing is not accidental. Rebus investigates against a backdrop of sectarian violence, Edinburgh's complicated relationship with Ulster loyalism, and the surveillance state that came to Scotland along with the Good Friday negotiations. Ian Rankin's sixth Rebus novel is the most explicitly political of the early series — a portrait of how violence from across the Irish Sea became embedded in Scottish criminal culture.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
graphic violence — torture is the method of the initial murder
sixth of the Rebus series
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