[By Nic Lindh on Sunday, 02 April 2006]
The Black Book finds John Rebus attempting to figure out who attacked one of his partners and put him in a coma outside a restaurant run by a man with an Elvis fixation and a bad case of horrible puns, attempt to save his current relationship after his girlfriend throws him out and forces him to move back in to his apartment which he is currently subletting to an unspecified number of university students, and to top it all off his brother comes to stay with him after his release from prison.
Ian Rankin has created quite a mess for Inspector Rebus to deal with in this, the fifth installment of the series, and he brings off the involved plot with aplomb, also finding the space to flesh out his secondary characters and, as usual, make Edinburgh itself into a character in the novel.
The Inspector Rebus series just gets better and better.
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