Then, Callum's family life begins to fall apart – his sister, Lynette, dies. Soon afterwards, Callum discovers his Dad, Ryan, The romance felt very rushed, and like it formed from nothing. I did like Callum and Sephy's friendship at the beginning, but as the story progressed they were constantly arguing, becoming angry at each other and then mending their relationship again. I felt as this was just constantly repeating. Then they are separated for a significant amount of time and straight afterwards their romance begins, with absolutely no development or lead in.

Callie Rose's best friend and later boyfriend, Tobey, is worried about his own future. As a Nought boy at an exclusive school, he hopes to keep out of trouble, go to university, get a good job and leave behind the dangerous streets of his childhood. However, he gets caught up in gang warfare when he's offered the chance to earn some easy money by making a few "deliveries." He finds out the delivery was for one of the prominent members of the Dowds, a notorious gang of Crosses. The detective puts all this together and figures out the identity and motives of the killer, which leads to a dramatic confrontation. Knots and Crosses' is an entertaining psychological/police procedural. It also is book one, first published in 1987, in the long-running Inspector Rebus series. I highly recommend it. And, most of all, there's Rebus' past, the years in the army and SAS that he won't -- or can't -- talk about.Still, I'd recommend the book to mystery fans. The Rebus books are well-worth reading and this is a good place to start. Kamal tells Sephy that if she keeps her child, Callum will be hanged, but if she has the abortion, he will serve years in prison instead. Kamal makes a similar offer to Callum, wanting Callum to publicly admit to raping Sephy. Both decide to keep the baby, and Callum is hanged at the gallows. Sephy then begins to experience strange symptoms, and takes a pregnancy test, revealing that she is pregnant with Callum's child. When her parents learn of this, they pressure her to have an abortion, which Sephy repeatedly refuses. Meanwhile, Callum is working as a mechanic as a cover, and hears Kamal on the radio being interrogated over whether his daughter is pregnant. Callum then meets up with Sephy in the Hadleys' rose garden, and she confirms the rumors. While they're meeting, they are discovered and Callum is arrested. Nobody believed Sephy when she maintains she was not raped, and Callum is sentenced to be hanged.

The characters are realistic and complex. I especially liked Callum, because he was a realist, and smart, too. Sephy irritated me to no end because she was so naive. But then again, I'm pretty sure she was supposed to be that way. It would be weird if she were like Callum, because their circumstances are so different. They are so different. At the time of the series, slavery had been abolished for some time, but segregation, similar to the Jim Crow Laws, continues to operate to keep the Crosses (dark-skinned people) in control of the Noughts (lighter-skinned people). An international organisation, the Pangaean Economic Community, exists. Seeming to be similar to the United Nations in scope but similar to the European Union in powers, it is playing a role in forcing change by directives and boycotts. Britain is known as Albion, Africa is one country called Zafrika, and Scandinavia is too, known as Fenno-Scandia, the only Nought country left. Still, Rankin does complicate matters nicely: there's Rebus' brother, Michael, the favoured son who followed in dad's footsteps and became a successful hypnotist -- but whose life (and, especially, success) isn't all it seems to be. Detective Sergeant John Rebus is assigned to the case, a top priority in Edinburgh, where the locals like to think this sort of thing can't happen.

Callum and Sephie are also established to have had a relationship for a long time - not an instalove measure. They endured a significant deal of challenges to that relationship from family and external measures. For example, I think the story of what happened on the train was worth noting. Their different viewpoints and coming to terms with the incident was a great illustration of how they recognized the prejudices surrounding them, but weren't aware of how to speak of them to each other because of their respective ages and coming to terms with how society viewed their interactions. It felt realistic. Even now after sleeping on what happened at the end of this stupid book I am a mess. My eyes are puffy and I hardly slept a wink. I tossed and turned and grumbled and fumbled around until I was a pissy asshole-oh, hey! Just like this book! Ugh. First of all, Callum and Sephy - guys I ADORE you. I really really do. Just know that I love you two. So much. I love you both with my life. A secondary character is a journalist named Jim Stevens. He adds two and two and comes up with five. Not much is told about this character, so I don’t know why the Epilogue is about him.

Rebus is assigned to a taskforce to capture a man the press calls “the Edinburgh Strangler”, who abducts and kills young girls, though without assaulting them sexually. He is also the recipient of envelopes, hand delivered, with cryptic messages and symbols – something he vaguely recognises from his past – within his repressed memories of the army. Michael Rebus - John's younger brother, rich from following his father's career in stage hypnotism, but with a few secrets to hide. Detective Inspector Gill Templer - The Press Liaison officer on the abduction case, and Rebus' on-off love interest Eva Foxton: An old nurse who becomes a mother figure for Dan, eventually succeeding him as the leader of his gang, the Outfit. There’s a sense of threat and danger throughout this version of Edinburgh. It is an impressively nasty book. Not just because of its ugly crimes, but also thanks to a bleak sensibility. One that is only enhanced by the lead character: Rebus himself is one of the things that makes the city feel so unsafe. We don’t know how many crimes he has solved. We haven’t seen his contempt for corruption and his fundamental decency. There is instead a feeling that this occasionally violent and permanently gruff man may be the mad one. That he may have murder inside him.I think Sephy and Callum's romantic ties could've been better portrayed and in maybe more subtle cues within many of the overarching punches. Somehow I wanted more from it, though I saw the conflict between them and understood that while there were aspects that drove them apart, it was an appreciation and respect for each other that kept them close. Towards the end of the book, I had a problem with the sequencing leading up to the ending - I understood the context, but the development didn't match to me and I don't think many people would get the significance of that parallel and turn in the conflict for the social attitudes of the time/issue it's mirroring. The romance is just, no. Racism is terrible but once one character has harmed another, it's best to no longer run with the romance angle. Storyline dangerously normalizes troubling relationship behaviors. The ending also felt incredibly rushed. While the first half of the book was very slow, the final quarter felt as though it had a whole books worth of plot points shoved into it. I most surely did not expect to be so pleasantly surprised by this book. Ian Rankin shows, throughout the novel, an uncanny ability to lift the veil of one's everyday thoughts and perceptions to reveal a somewhat twisted reality lying underneath, like a lurking beast of prey, and he does it subtly enugh, thoughtfully enoough, to convince me he is no mere hireling. So are you thinking to dive into Knots and Crosses and find just the umpteenth copy-and-paste thriller novel? Forget that. Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”