The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin

The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Slowly Ian Rankin is making inroads into my reading habit and I am beginning to appreciate his writing. Though it comes nowhere close to the class of a John Le Carre or possibly even a Alistair McLean, Ian Rankin has his charm and style even though he limits himself to Edinburgh.

The Hanging Garden is a decent read for people who have developed a taste for Ian Rankin. Nothing untoward, nothing dramatic and like the town he describes is a quiet book.

The book is about gang rivalry in Edinburgh between two underground groups, one which has established itself in the city for a long time and has been operating there for a long time and the other which has come of Paisley and is trying to usurp the current group. The latter is led by an (over)ambitious who wishes to have a pie of every business. The leader has found a very easy way of smuggling in drugs into the country by winning the hearts of the senior citizens in the city. He also has a hand in the prostitution that is going on and is on the verge of expanding this business via gaming (read gambling) parlours with help from another group from New Castle. He also goes on to invite some from the Japanese underground Yakuza.

In the process of trying to prove his hold over the town and in trying to show off his prowess to pull off a big haul in the city the group fails miserably, thanks to the detective work of John Rebus the protagonist of the novel.

That is short is what all the novel about. But what adds charm is the description of the locales that John Rebus visits during the various escapades that he has in the town and tidbits about his personal life and the vicissitudes of his life.

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