3.5* Better than average but not really my preferred style of police procedural mystery - Rebus has too many problems which makes me feel tired and depressed... but the actual mystery/detection part of the book was excellent. ( )

DI John Rebus is caught up in cases past and present: a serial killer dubbed “Johnny Bible” is murdering young women, in an echo of a serial killer some 20 years ago named by the papers “Bible John” because he quoted from the Bible before killing his prey, also young women. At the same time, a worker on an oil platform in the North Sea has died while on leave, in a case that involves villains from Rebus’s past. He has been sidelined by his superiors yet again, but that will not stop him from pursuing his leads, wherever they may take him…. I started this novel, the eighth in the series, feeling quite fed up with Rebus - he is sinking deeper into alcoholism, has alienated just about everybody in his world and still can’t seem to stop himself from chasing whatever leads his sometimes-addled mind throws up. But then there comes a passage like this: “I’m a peeper, he thought, a voyeur. All cops are. But he knew he was more than that: he liked to get involved in the lives around him. He had a need to know which went beyond voyeurism. It was a drug. And the thing was, when he had all this knowledge, he then had to use booze to blank it out. He saw his reflection in the window, two-dimensional, ghostly. I’m almost not here at all, he thought.” That sort of insight into his own behaviour again brings me back into sympathy with the character. While the complex plot is engaging, and the late 1990s politics of oil is well described, it is the character of this very flawed human being that makes this series so compelling; recommended, after all. ( )

It's a while since I read a Ian Rankin (Inspector Rebus) book, this was a good one get reaquainted with him again. Is is nearly 500 pages, complex plot, many players and quite a page turner.
A good read overall. It was loosely based it on real crimes. ( )

Rückkehr eines Serienmörders? Vor Jahrzehnten hat der grausame Serientäter Bible John mehre Frauen brutal umgebracht, wurde aber nie gefasst. Nun wütet in Schottland nach demselben Muster ein neuer Killer, von den Medien kurzerhand Johnny Bible getauft. Erste Vermutungen führen Rebus nach Glasgow und Aberdeen, doch ihm läuft die Zeit davon. Johnny Bible wird bald wieder morden, und – was noch keiner weiß – der alte Bible John hat sich bereits an die Fersen seines „unwürdigen“ Nachahmers geheftet …

Longest, most complex, and probably best written Rebus book so far (reading them in order of course). ( )