A Heart Full of Headstones (Inspector John Rebus Series #24)

A Heart Full of Headstones (Inspector John Rebus Series #24)

by Ian Rankin

Narrated by James Macpherson

Unabridged — 11 hours, 43 minutes

A Heart Full of Headstones (Inspector John Rebus Series #24)

A Heart Full of Headstones (Inspector John Rebus Series #24)

by Ian Rankin

Narrated by James Macpherson

Unabridged — 11 hours, 43 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

$27.99
FREE With a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
$0.00

Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime

START FREE TRIAL

Already Subscribed? 

Sign in to Your BN.com Account


Listen on the free Barnes & Noble NOOK app


Related collections and offers

FREE

with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription

Or Pay $27.99

Overview

New York Times bestselling author Ian Rankin returns to his legendary detective-it's not the first time Rebus has taken the law into his own hands, though it may be the last.*

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
*
But what drove a good man to cross the line?
*
Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke may well find out. Clarke is tasked with the city's most explosive case in years, an infamous cop, at the center of decades of misconduct, has gone missing. Finding him will expose not only her superiors, but her mentor John Rebus. And Rebus himself may not have her own interests at heart, as the repayment of a past debt places him in the crosshairs of both crime lords and his police brethren.
*
One way or another, a reckoning is coming - and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders...

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

Narrator James Macpherson returns to portray now retired Detective Inspector John Rebus and the police and villains who inhabit his world. The procedural opens with Rebus in a courtroom as the accused. Listeners are then drawn into a complex backstory of police corruption, domestic violence, and a murder investigation that eventually results in Rebus’s arrest. Listeners also get to spend more time with Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke and her colleagues. Macpherson’s Scottish brogue and facility with other accents help to differentiate the many characters and create the Edinburgh atmosphere so key to the success of this longstanding series. Fans will appreciate this addition to the Rebus chronicles; those unfamiliar will catch on quickly. E.Q. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/01/2022

Edgar winner Rankin’s outstanding 24th John Rebus novel (after 2020’s A Song for the Dark Times) opens dramatically with the Edinburgh detective, officially retired but still working, in the dock charged with a crime that’s not revealed until the very end. Flashbacks show familiar characters from Rebus’s world pursuing various agendas. Organized crime kingpin Morris “Big Ger” Cafferty, an old adversary of the detective, asks Rebus to find a man he wronged, but Rebus still has eyes on taking down Cafferty. Det. Insp. Siobhan Clarke, a former colleague of Rebus’s, is investigating a policeman accused of domestic abuse who threatens to expose a culture of police corruption (“Skeletons are about to come tumbling out of closets”). Malcolm Fox, a loathsome, ambitious detective inspector, wants to contain that threat’s collateral damage. Every thread leads to murder. The well-constructed plot is matched by brooding, atmospheric prose (Rebus has “spent his whole life in... a city perpetually dark, feeling increasingly weighed down, his heart full of headstones”). This is one of Rankin’s best Rebus novels in years. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

One of Crimereads most anticipated Fall 2022 titles
A PW Book of the Week
One of Financial Times Best Books of the Year


"Outstanding. . . the well-constructed plot is matched by brooding, atmospheric prose. This is one of Rankin’s best Rebus novels in years."—Publishers Weekly

“As the pas de deux between now-retired Edinburgh copper John Rebus and his longtime nemesis, gangster Big Ger Cafferty, inches closer to its final act, the stakes continue to grow… The aging of maverick detectives has become a poignant theme in today's crime fiction, with Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch joining Rebus in an effort to keep solving one more case as a way of "stirring dull roots with spring rain," as Eliot puts it in "The Waste Land." Rankin captures both the heroism and the pathos of that ultimately doomed quest in this cleverly constructed and deeply moving novel.”—Booklist

“Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.”—Kirkus Reviews

“S**t gets real in Rankin’s latest… Another strong installment of a beloved series.”—Crimereads

A Heart Full of Headstones is another excellent crime novel from an author at the apex of his craft.”

Michael J. McCann, New York Journal of Books

“The circumstances that will end up putting Rebus ‘in the dock’ as a suspect will remain a secret in this review. All I can say is that it makes for some truly complex and intriguing moments and some of Ian Rankin’s most intense writing in this series."—Ray Palen, BookReporter

“The added mystery in this outstandingcrime fiction adds to the tension, and forces Rebus to examine his life’s work and choices…In each of his novels, Rankin has explored a different aspect of Rebus. His detective is aging but he is still sharp and knows his way around an investigation as he proves in thesuperlative “A Heart Full of Headstones.”—Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Library Journal

09/01/2022

Rankin doesn't disappoint with book 24 in his Edinburgh-set Rebus series (following A Song for the Dark Times). Retired cop John Rebus is on the wrong side of the courtroom this time—on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Could "retired" gangster Big "Ger" Cafferty have played a part? Rebus is drawn again into a web of crime-filled Edinburgh. Cafferty orders Rebus to locate a former employee who absconded with a huge sum of Ger's money, but had long since disappeared, presumed dead. Word on the street has Jack Oram very much alive and last seen at a local lettings office. Not buying Ger's reasons for the search, but because long-standing debts must be paid, Rebus sets out. Meanwhile, Rebus's long-suffering pal and protégée D.I. Siobhan Clarke investigates the murder of a fellow police officer who was found dead in a flat managed by the same lettings office. As Rebus and Clarke follow their separate paths, their cases intertwine. Prior misdeeds of Rebus and his contemporaries surface as the investigation continues. VERDICT For the many fans of Rebus and those who enjoy gritty Scottish noir.—Susan Santa

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

Narrator James Macpherson returns to portray now retired Detective Inspector John Rebus and the police and villains who inhabit his world. The procedural opens with Rebus in a courtroom as the accused. Listeners are then drawn into a complex backstory of police corruption, domestic violence, and a murder investigation that eventually results in Rebus’s arrest. Listeners also get to spend more time with Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke and her colleagues. Macpherson’s Scottish brogue and facility with other accents help to differentiate the many characters and create the Edinburgh atmosphere so key to the success of this longstanding series. Fans will appreciate this addition to the Rebus chronicles; those unfamiliar will catch on quickly. E.Q. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2022-09-28
Criminal Investigation Department pensioner John Rebus is lured from forced retirement by the world’s most unlikely client.

Wheelchair-bound Morris Gerald Cafferty, known by every criminal in Edinburgh as Big Ger, feels uncharacteristically guilty over the pressure he put on Jack Oram, who managed the Potter’s Bar for Cafferty and helped himself liberally to the till before vanishing four years ago. Now that he’s heard rumors Oram’s back in town, he’d like his old nemesis to track the embezzler down so that Cafferty could have a word with him. Initially incredulous, Rebus agrees to poke around. Meanwhile, Rebus’ old mate DI Siobhan Clarke is looking for another missing person—Cheryl Haggard, who has enough scars to present convincing evidence against her husband, Francis, a uniformed cop accused of domestic violence. Clarke’s old frenemy DI Malcolm Fox, a hotshot who’s vaulted into the Specialist Crime Division, wants her investigation shut down before Francis Haggard can retaliate by implicating half his fellow officers on the Tynecastle force. When Francis takes the dilemma out of Clarke’s hands by going AWOL and turning up conveniently stabbed to death, everything’s resolved—except for all those accusations about the Tynecastle constabulary, and the fate of the dead-or-alive Jack Oram, and what looks increasingly like a revolving door between Edinburgh’s criminal establishment and Edinburgh’s finest. Rebus and Clarke soon establish connections between his case and hers, but that unsurprising news is only the beginning of a series of detonations, figurative and literal, that will ultimately land Rebus, as a teasing prologue shows, standing in the dock himself.

Two years after his checkered hero’s last outing, Rankin makes you feel the wait was worth every day, whatever comes next.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940178448717
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Publication date: 10/18/2022
Series: Inspector John Rebus Series , #24
Edition description: Unabridged
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews