A Heart Full of Headstones

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.