Hide and Seek

From Amazon:

At night the summer sky stays light over Edinburgh. But in a shadowy, crumbling housing development, a junkie lies dead of an overdose, his bruised body surrounded by signs of Satanic worship. John Rebus could call the death and accident--but won't. Instead, he tracks down a violent-tempered young woman who knew the dead boy and heard him cry out his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" Now, with the help of a bright, conflicted young detective, Rebus is following the girl through a brutal world of bad deals, bad dope and bad company. From a beautiful city's darkest side to the private sanctums of the upper crust, Rebus is seeking the perfect hiding place for a killer.

My Thoughts:

Like most cities, there are two sides of show more Edinburgh, Scotland. There's the side that tourists see: the city of Grayfriar's Bobby, of the annual Summer Festival, of the quaint pubs and the scenic castle sitting on a hill called Arthur's Throne. Then there's the other side of Edinburgh, the domain of Detective Inspector John Rebus. Rebus is a believable cop - with lots of personality quirks and a not-so-perfect personal life. The descriptions of his work environment and the politics involved in being a cop are on the money. He makes Scotland comes alive...the weather, the moods, the citizens, and above all...the crime. Anyone who is looking for something different, and compelling will want to read Ian Rankin's John Rebus novels. show less

John Rebus, now a detective inspector with the Edinburgh police department, has been tapped by Superintendent Watson to head up a civilian-financed drugs program. He is told to wrap up his current cases and take things easy until meetings can be arranged, but Rebus has just come across the death of a junkie in a squat, an apparent overdose that just doesn’t smell right to him. He resolves to use his free time to dig a little deeper into the death, but soon finds that it is taking him to places, and people, he never would have imagined…. This is the second John Rebus novel, published in 1990, and featuring the gritty underbelly of Edinburgh during those years. We learn a little more about Rebus’s thought processes, and we meet DC show more Brian Holmes (who I assume will be Rebus’s second in later books); we also learn more about the higher (male) echelons of Edinburgh’s society, which may or may not be a good thing. I like Rebus and I’m glad to have started this long-heard-of but unread series at long last; still, if you’re a queasy reader, I’d probably give these books a miss as there is a lot of violence and, well, sordid behaviour on pretty much everybody’s part. If you’re *not* queasy, though, recommended. show less

After reading this second book in the series about Rebus, I am officially a fan. The plot is very suspenseful and the shady characters are extremely shady, although it's a great guessing-game which ones are and which ones aren't the baddies (and which ones are a bit of both). Rankin has a brilliant ear for dialogue and his characters are one-of-a-kind, not only in their personalities, but in their actions, their outlook, and their humor, which is my preference when it comes to stories - I can live with a hazy plot as long as the characters are as solid as they are here. The literary theme is even stronger in this installment too with a plot which parallels Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and show more Edinburgh's dual nature (a real-life one, by the way) is developed even further. show less

Hide and Seek is a fast-paced thriller that keeps the reader on the edge of the seat. This is the second book in the series and a lot seems to have happened between the two books. Rebus' position is more senior now than in the first book.

He seems to have got his new rank after a high profile case which involved sending his own brother away for drug-dealing. He's long since divorced and the female DI with whom he most recently had a relationship has dumped him for a big-name radio disk jockey. He lives by himself, sleeping many of his nights in a chair fully clothed, his living room has books and LPs stacked all over the place, and he's trying to ration his cigarettes and cut down on the booze, but not succeeding very well. While he's show more not an especially likeable person, he has the combined instincts of a bulldog and a terrier when it comes to investigation. Rebus is a copper through and through. Like many fictional policemen, he's hard-boiled and hard-drinking. But he also reads, he likes art, he listens to jazz. He's unusual.

And when the dead body of a young drug addict is found in a filthy squat - possibly the victim of a satanic killing - you can be sure that Edinburgh's most complicated and iconoclastic copper won't be restricting himself to playing by the rules to solve the mystery. show less

I'm still new to the world of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus, but I quite enjoyed this. There's times where I'm not sure if it's the author messing up, or that Rebus simply is consciously cruel to others, but overall, an enjoyable story. Will definitely read more.

I have read most of the Rebus books in an ad hoc order based upon what the local library had upon their shelves. This book must either have been so popular that it was always loaned out, or so unpopular that they did not bother to hold a copy.
Having read it as part of my quest to read/re-read the Rebus novels in order, I would understand the former but find the latter to be a monumental error on the part of the librarian. Rebus continues to grow into the character that we know and love in his later exploits. The affair with Gill Templar has cooled and the early signs of Rebus' fight with 'the booze' are in evidence. I suspect that Rankin must have had a life plan for Rebus before the books were written. This has the advantage of giving show more us a detective who develops: he is not, like some of his famous counterparts, stuck at one age through the decades and his weaknesses swell and fade with a believable rhythm again in contrast to certain detectives.
The story here is of a drugs over dose but, was it self inflicted, or was it murder? I am dubious that a real police force would have the time to investigate such a circumstance but, if one lets this pass, the story hangs together well. In the end, of course, Rebus gets his man: or does he? show less

A dead junkie is found in an Edinburgh squat, the victim of an overdose. To most cops, that’s barely worth a mention. To John Rebus, it looks like a crime.

I didn’t love the first book in Ian Rankin’s Rebus series, but was encouraged by friends to persist (they say gets better). Well, they were right. This is a better book than the first in the series. It still has its issues (two police officers Rebus works with this time are named — I’m not making this up — Holmes and Watson). But the story is more interesting and I’m tempted to continue with the series based on this book.