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Loading... Die Kinder des Todes: Roman (original 2003; edition 2009)by Ian Rankin
Work detailsA Question of Blood by Ian Rankin (2003)
None.  GeorgeBowling | Mar 7, 2012 |  The book opens with Rebus in hospital with bad burns to both his hands. He claims he fell into a bathtub filled with scalding water but it looks suspicious because a bad guy who had been bothering Siobhan died in a fire the same night Rebus went to hospital. Being under suspicion is nothing new to Rebus nor is working when he is physically not fit. So he ends up at work just as a call comes in asking for his help in an investigation into a school shooting. The shooter was ex-Forces and so is Rebus so it's thought he might have some insight. Because of his hands he can't drive so Siobhan has to accompany him. Two boys were killed and another one, the son of an MP, was badly injured. The shooter killed himself when he finished the killings. As Rebus and Siobhan go over the details Rebus realizes that one of the boys who was killed is a relative, the son of a cousin. He's been out of touch with this cousin for years but he goes to see him to find a broken man. As the investigation continues there seems to be no reason for the killer to have shot these boys. He didn't even know the ones he killed. The MP's son used to hang out with him, go to parties but they had had no falling out. Meanwhile the fire investigation is finding that Rebus drank with the dead man hours before the fire started and Rebus even went back to his house. Rebus insists that he was alive when he left there but he's suspended (again!). Siobhan is wondering if the burned body was even her harrasser because she is getting anonymous notes from someone who seems to know a lot about her. The break in the case for Rebus is something insignificant but he believes he is close to understanding the killer's motivations. Then the forensics expert calls with some puzzling blood spatter evidence and suddenly the case is turned on its head. Rebus is also able to clear himself of the fire death by getting the real killer's sidekick to confess. Siobhan has another close call but she's okay and Rebus, in a rare show of emotion, picks her up and hugs her. (  ) gypsysmom | Dec 1, 2011 | Because of school and a lack of "entertainment" reading time it took me forever to read this book. I did enjoy it though! I really liked the (very small) twist at the end ... As the book was ending the writing became a lot better and more suspenseful! I also really enjoyed that it was a "foreign" novel but the quotation marks used are what I'm used to. I tried to read an English/British novel and the quotation marks were reverse of what I'm used to, which confused the heck out of me! It was horrible. ( ) Adrianne_p | Nov 12, 2011 | Rebus is sent to investigate a spree killing in a private school, one that involves his own family. The stakes are high for our hero in this installment and it should make for a tight read, but somehow the writing isn't really up to par - Rebus' involvement with the mystery seems to be almost less dogged than in other cases. There are some really grand emotional moments for Rebus, though, as well as a few great laughs and it's definitely a very good installment in a really great series. ( ) -Eva- | May 10, 2011 | http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1707280.html Another excellent Rebus novel, let down a little bit by the end - the solution to one of the mysteries depends on someone simply by coincidence having been in the right place at the right time and then doing something rather unexpected conveniently for the plot, another mystery depends on the memory of one of the viewpoint characters and is revealed to us only at the very end though presumably the character in question has been aware of it all through the book. Also I now have spotted that whenever we start to hear in great detail about Siobhan's (Rebus's sidekick's) observations of her surroundings, something 'orrible is about to happen to her. But on the way there we have the usual brilliant interweaving of professional jealousies, moments of heroism, awful politicians (a recurrent Rebus/Rankin theme), music, and stories from various levels of society which intersect each other in unexpected ways. Pretty accessible to the newcomer as well, I would think. ( ) nwhyte | Apr 23, 2011 |
 But of all Rankin's assets, it's his dialogue that impresses most. It kicks the story forward, not unlike the rhythm section of Rebus' beloved Stones. The speakers feel like sentient beings -- they shade, allude and obfuscate, and they are conscious that the person they're talking to is doing the same.  The primary challenge of any long detective series is to turn new aspects of the character towards the light with each novel. A Question of Blood achieves this because Rebus, never previously very likable, begins the book under suspicion of being a murderer himself. A crook who had been threatening Rebus's colleague DS Siobhan Clarke has died in a fire. The detective inspector, seen with the victim earlier in the evening, is admitted to hospital with scalded hands.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0316159182, Mass Market Paperback)Given his contempt for authority, his tendency to pursue investigative avenues of his own choosing, and his habitually ornery manner, it's a wonder that John Rebus hasn't been booted unceremoniously from his job as an Edinburgh cop. He certainly tempts that fate again in A Question of Blood, which finds him and his younger partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, trying to close the case of a withdrawn ex-soldier named Lee Herdman, who apparently shot three teenage boys at a Scottish private school, leaving two of them dead, before turning the pistol on himself."There’s no mystery," Siobhan insists at the start of this 14th Rebus novel (following Resurrection Men). "Herdman lost his marbles, that’s all." However, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Rebus, who'd once sought entry into the same elite regiment in which Herdman served (but ultimately cracked under psychological interrogation), thinks there's more motive than mania behind this classroom slaughter. Perhaps something to do with the gunman's role in a 1995 mission to salvage a downed military helicopter, or with Teri Cotter, a 15-year-old "Goth" who broadcasts her bedroom life over the Internet, yet keeps private her relationship with the haunted Herdman. Rebus's doubts about the murder-suicide theory are deepened with the appearance of two tight-lipped army investigators, and by the peculiar behavior of James Bell, the boy who was only wounded during Herdman's firing spree and whose politician father hopes to use that tragedy as ammo in the campaign against widespread gun ownership. But the detective inspector's focus on this inquiry is susceptible to diversion, both by an internal police probe into his role in the burning death of a small-time crook who'd been stalking Siobhan, and by the fact that Rebus--who shies away from any family contacts--was related to one of Herdman’s victims. Now middle-aged and on the downward slope of his pugnacity (the high point may have come in 1997's Black and Blue), Rebus has become the engine of his own obsolescence. Overexposure to criminals has left him better at understanding them than his colleagues, and he only worsens his career standing by fighting other people's battles for them, especially Siobhan, who risks learning too many lessons from her mentor. To watch Rebus subvert police conventions and fend of personal demons (that latter struggle mirrored in A Question of Blood by Herdman's own) is worth the admission to this consistently ambitious series. --J. Kingston Pierce (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:45:47 -0400) John Rebus has to face up to the most savage and senseless crime imaginable, one in which all his knowledge of human motivation is rendered useless and one that will take him to the heart of human darkness. (summary from another edition) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Many Rankin novels let themselves down towards the end. This one manages to last the distance.
Just lovely.