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Despite too much that is too simple or too sensational, and Rankin not showing enough patience with some of the detail (the book is packed with actions, events, and encounters), this is a very good mystery-thriller, a fine entertainment. Each strand has a mystery at its core - who is the blond girl that the Misper is last seen with, is the psycho responsible for a 20 year cold case and who is the third man in the paedo case? Two-time murderer, Cary Oakes is on his way to Edinburgh after being released from prison in the States. He has to confront this once again when he discovers that the reason behind the suicide of his police colleague Jim Margolies was fear that he was becoming like his incestuous father.
He is, at his core, a deeply moral character, but he has lost much of his faith, along with many friends and family members, along the way. The man was standing on a grassy slope sixty-odd feet away, adjusting the focus on a sizeable telescopic lens. There are also unintended (and fully intended consequences of crimes against adults throughout the book -- Rebus' own hands aren't entirely clean here.It would be some sort of weird mirror image, where son's classroom surliness was reflected in Dad's obvious displeasure at coming to school for a meeting.
I've always liked Edinburgh, but I felt that I wanted to see a different side of it than the all thought and little action world of Isabel.Rebus also has to face up to his own past and the route he took to escape it when his friend Brian Mee and former girlfriend Janice approach him to help find their son Damon, who has gone missing. A psychopath, all the indications are that he will kill again -- and the Edinburgh police are none too pleased when he decides the first place he'll settle down in is their patch. Rebus sort of lives with Patience, but that doesn't seem to be going too well, as he seems to spend more days sleeping elsewhere. Rebus is moments away from doing something he'll regret almost instantly and that will have ramifications on everything he does for the foreseeable future, some of which will likely haunt him for more than that. I did enjoy the exercise of remembering what was happening in each tale, and guessing if there would be any overlap, and if so, where it may occur.
Rankin's Inspector John Rebus (Mortal Causes; Let It Bleed) is something of an outlaw cop, a hard-drinking, rock-and-roll-loving loner who tends to make his superiors see red. He wants to hole up with Oakes and get the story out of him, but Oakes has plans of his own -- and the means to carry them out. serving as typical language of the roughish characters forming the narrative: inspectors, establishment owners, street people, cabbies, dockers, etc. Anyway, Dead Souls focuses on crimes against children and what that can do to them -- not just at the moment they're victimized, but years later.John Rebus comes out of retirement in Edgar-winner Rankin's stellar 20th novel featuring the Edinburgh cop (after 2013's Standing in Another Man's Grave). No longer do I expect the tale to unravel in a planned way and that only adds to the enjoyment of Rankin's books.
Well, it's not a series with a sunny outlook, by any means, and Inspector Rebus is not an altogether sympathetic central character. as Rebus, literally going over an edge (a cliff, in fact): the book begins with Jim Margulies' death, an apparent suicide. While, as is his habit, he deploys a complex plot made of apparently unrelated elements, and in doing so binds the highest in the land to the poorest in their feral pursuit of gold and gratification, at some points the book lacks the element of menace which has given several of its predecessors their addictive appeal. But another problem develops for Rebus: a convicted murderer has him in his sights for some lethal games. Best know for his Rebus series, they deliver hard-boiled crime with a distinct Scottish flavour - sometimes cheesily referred to as "Tartan Noir".
Meanwhile I started out thinking it a three-star book for a different reason: it just seemed so obtuse and difficult to get into initially. While the many plot lines pull the narrative in disparate directions, the whole is held together by Rankin's drum-tight characterization of Rebus as a man deeply shaken in his convictions, but unwilling to fall apart.
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