This is an early book in the Rebus series and he's kind of 'Rebus light.' That is - though he's demanding - Rebus isn't the difficult, pushy, irascible, alcoholic, boss-hating man he becomes in later books. A friend of mine, a long time resident of Edinburgh, used to tell me that the city has this posh and calm appearance but what lurks just below the surface, invisible to the occasional visitor, is a darker, murkier place. And this is what John Rebus discovers here. He’s recently been promoted to Inspector and, in truth, he seems rather drunk with the power of it. The main plot line concerns a dead drug addict, found in a squat. Rebus just has a feel about the scene of death and decides to sniff around a bit more than would normally seem necessary in a case seemingly as cut and dried as this. There’s also a new Superintendent to deal with and he’s co-opted John onto a small team looking at the wider issue of the city’s growing drug problems.

A nice touch is the cynical end, the knowledge that the truly rich and powerful can hush things up and save their skins (the occasional sacrifice notwithstanding) -- and Rebus' awareness of all this. Hide and Seek is a 1991 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the second of the Inspector Rebus novels. This novel is not to be confused with James Patterson's 1996 novel Hide and Seek. He stared at her, his eyes seeming almost to recognise her. Then he looked away again, into a distance all of his own. The word was a snakelike hiss. Ours is not to ask questions, you know that.’ The man who spoke was the oldest of the three, and the only Calvinist. He opened the car boot. Inside, the body of a frail teenager lay crumpled, obviously dead. His skin was the colour of pencil shading, darkest where the bruises lay. in the series featuring Inspector John Rebus. In this installment, John Rebus is called in to investigate the death of a drug addict in a dilapidated flat in one of the worst parts of Edinburgh. He notices a lot of strange things right away, and shares his findings his fellow officers who do not seem to care. It's just another OD. The victim's girlfriend, however, says that the last thing he said was "Hide..." and that "they" murdered him. Rebus' investigation takes him into both the seamy side of Edinburgh as well as its social heights.

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It was Rian's voice, warning him that he was not ‘taking part', was not ‘conversing' or even looking interested. He accepted the large oval dish with a smile, but avoided her eyes. A contributor to BBC2's Newsnight Review, he also presented his own TV series, Ian Rankin's Evil Thoughts, on Channel 4 in 2002. He recently received the OBE for services to literature, and opted to receive the prize in his home city of Edinburgh, where he lives with his partner and two sons.

It is, sadly, a topic that one should not have to preface with a “trigger warning”. I don’t like the term "trigger warning" only because they seem to me to be much like “taboo subject”, which I think is utter and complete horseshit. (I understand that there is a difference, and I apologize to anyone who may be triggered by this topic. I do not mean, in any way, to trivialize or downplay the issue of mental triggers.) I don’t believe any subject should be taboo. I believe labeling a subject taboo makes talking about important subjects that need to be talked about that much harder to talk about. To assist with his inquiries, Rebus reaches out to Sergeant Brian Holmes - the cop least likely to complain about Rebus's numerous demands. The conversation returned to how busy Edinburgh seemed these days. Here was something with which Rebus could agree. This being the end of May, the tourists were almost in season. But there was more to it than that. If anyone had told him five years ago that in 1989 people would be emigrating north from the south of England to the Lothians, he’d have laughed out loud. Now it was fact, and a fit topic for the dinner table. Meanwhile, Tracy reports that she's being followed, and Rebus notices that he's being followed as well. It's clear that someone is interested in Rebus's investigation, and he has to find out why. The deceased's girlfriend, Tracy, calls the police and gets in touch with Rebus, warily trying to help, concerned also for her own safety, all the while as much trouble as she is help.After reading the first book in the series, Knots and Crosses, I felt the ending was open ended and that I needed to read this second book. The books are so dissimilar that I’m a bit at a loss. The John Rebus from the first book was suffering from memories of the war, and in this book there’s very few mentions of the war and none of what haunted him. It’s almost as if this is a new character entirely. In the Exile on Princes Street foreword to Rebus: The Early Years, Rankin says this was his second attempt at updating Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde into then-modern Edinburgh ("one reviewer 'got it'"), and with this book he began to like Rebus as a character and thought he could use him as a recurring mouthpiece for stories about his views on Scotland. [1]