By Ian Rankin (Orion Fiction 2020):

John Rebus may be retired but there’s plenty of life in the old police dog yet, as we discover in A Song for the Dark Times.

In this the 24^th Rebus novel, we find the grumpy former detective moving home to a ground floor apartment. He can no longer manage the flights of stairs to his old flat due to the disease infecting his lungs.

Rankin, a master of the crime/thriller genre, presents us with two murders for the price of one. 

Salman Bin Mahmoud, a young Saudi playboy with a James Bond obsession and the Aston Martins to prove it, is found stabbed to death in a back street car park in Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, in a small coastal village several hundred miles further north, Keith Grant – the partner of Rebus’ daughter Samantha – has gone missing.

Fearing the worst, Rebus rushes to his daughter’s side, knowing from past experience that she will be the prime suspect.

Although now on Civvy Street, he can’t resist the urge to investigate and focuses on Keith’s obsession with the history of a local Second World War internment camp, where he soon discovers his body in an accommodation hut. 

The question is, are the two murders connected? The camp is on land where owner Lord Strathy wants to build a golf resort. Salman and his wealthy friends have various connections with the aristocrat and may be about to invest in the controversial venture.

Did Keith, who wanted to turn the camp into a tourist attraction, get in their way? Or was he the victim of a crime of jealous passion? Samantha, we discover, had been having an affair with Jess Hawkins, a former City high-flyer who had set up a hippy-style commune on Strathy’s land after a big deal went badly wrong. 

Hawkins happens to believe in free love and has a child with Strathy’s ex-wife Angharad Oates. I’m sure there’s a pun in there somewhere.

As we’ve come to expect from Rankin, nothing is as straight forward as it might initially seem. There are enough red herrings here to feed an entire murder investigation team. 

Rankin has got the whole band back together. Trusty sidekick DI Siobhan Clarke investigates Salman’s death, ably assisted by DCI Malcolm Fox. 

Both play significant roles as the plot unfolds and you do wonder whether they may be the future focus of Rankin’s writing as Rebus’s legendary powers of detection diminish with age.

We also see the return of Big Ger Cafferty, the head of organised crime who always seems to find a way to gain a hold over senior police officers with some incriminating evidence that threatens their careers.

Rankin’s writing rattles along at pace, driven by his dynamic dialogue and supported by a forensic attention to detail. 

There’s very little room for unnecessary similies or metaphors in his no-nonsense approach to crime writing in which he ratchets up the tension and jeopardy with intelligent twists and turns. 

His command of both character and plot is what makes him one of the world’s leading storytellers.