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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
A lot
A historical cover-up investigated; political violence from the 1980s; some present-day menace
Language
Some
Some strong language
Sexual Content
Barely any
Mild content
Substance Use
Barely any
Mild content
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The specific difficulty of investigating people who protected a cover-up for so long that it has become their version of the truth; Fox's Complaints role and its particular institutional hostility
What this book is about
Malcolm Fox of the Complaints is sent to Fife to investigate an officer who may have covered up the death of an informant. The investigation leads back to a political assassination from the 1980s — a death connected to Scotland's independence movement — and to people who have been protecting the cover-up for decades. Ian Rankin's second Malcolm Fox novel is his most politically historical — the SNP and independence movement are part of the background in a way that dates the story to a specific moment in Scottish politics — and Fox's outsider status in Fife gives the investigation its dynamic.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
second Malcolm Fox novel by Ian Rankin
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