A Good Hanging (Inspector John Rebus Series)

by Ian Rankin

Overview

A Good Hanging contains twelve remarkable, gritty stories starring Detective Inspector John Rebus in his home city of Edinburgh, as only Ian Rankin can portray it: not just the tearooms and cobbled streets of the tourist brochures, but a modern urban metropolis with a full range of criminals and their victims—blackmailers, peeping Toms, and more than one kind of murderer. It's a city like any other, a city that gives birth to crimes of passion, accidents, and long-hidden jealousy, and a city in which criminal minds find it all too easy to fade into the shadows. As dedicated readers of the series well know, nobody is better equipped to delve into Edinburgh's back alleys and smoky pubs than Rebus, and no one better able to illuminate his world than Ian Rankin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312653514
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/2010
Series:	Inspector John Rebus Series
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ian Rankin is the worldwide #1 bestselling writer of the Inspector Rebus mysteries, including Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, Let It Bleed, Black and Blue, Set in Darkness, Resurrection Men, A Question of Blood, The Falls and Exit Music. He has won an Edgar Award, a Gold Dagger for fiction, a Diamond Dagger for career excellence, and the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He has been elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his contributions to literature. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1982. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.

Hometown:

Edinburgh, London and France

Date of Birth:

April 28, 1960

Place of Birth:

Cardenden, Scotland

Education:

Edinburgh University

Website:

http://www.ianrankin.net

Editorial Reviews

A...but beautifully written series.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

For his 13th Det. Insp. John Rebus volume, Ian Rankin (The Falls) has traded the full-length police procedural for a collection of 12 gripping stories. The king of tartan noir puts his popular Scottish "heart attack material" supersleuth to work investigating arson, a ghostly vision, a converted ex-con and the "perfect murder" in A Good Hanging's fast-paced mini-mysteries. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Although Edgar Allen Poe proved that it was possible to craft a satisfying short mystery, there is always something disatisfying about that form: under its limitations, the plot contrivances are more obvious and the character development skimpier. First published in England in 1992, this collection of 12 tales reflects those flaws, but it also features Detective Inspector John Rebus, Rankin's police hero, and his fascinating city of Edinburgh. From the hanging of a young actor to a confessed murderer's declaration of innocence, the enigmatic and secretive Rebus solves these cases, much to the chagrin of his inferiors (and superiors): "How was he [Holmes] expected to shine, to be noticed, to push forward to promotion, when it was always Rebus who, two steps ahead, came up with the answers?" These stories are slight but enjoyable. Budgets allowing, purchase for your Rankin fans; otherwise, stick to Rankin's more complex and compelling novels like The Falls. Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Nothing more than 12 character studies, perhaps-but the character they're studying is probably the most interesting man in detective fiction, the quintessential thinking man, Edinburgh DI John Rebus. It's fascinating to watch him ratiocinate his way through a schoolgirl's enforced suicide ("The Gentlemen's Club"), his old nemesis "Trigger" Crawford's revenge on a drug dealer ("Auld Lang Syne"), a peeper's comeuppance ("Tit for Tat"), an alibi that breaks down, rises again, then crumbles ("Not Provan"), a Hammett cliche ("The Dean Curse"), and a hanging that turns out to be manual strangulation (the title story). Rebus, per usual, groans at pathologist Dr. Curt's puns-most noticeably in "Seeing Things"-reconstructs and then deconstructs a murder scenario in "Concrete Evidence," believes a murderer when he recants a confession in "Playback," and sorts through fantasy and fact as they wend their way through Frank the tramp's brain in "Being Frank." And while "Monstrous Trumpet" finds Rankin in a playful mood and Rebus confronting his Francophobia and a passel of man-baiters, it is the brief "Sunday" and Rebus's reaction to murdering a thug that most worries his perpetual underling, Constable Brian Holmes-and sticks with the reader the longest afterward.

Kirkus Reviews