Black and Blue by Ian Rankin

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A earlier book of Inspector Rebus. I have not been reading them in the chronological order so this book takes us to an earlier era of Rebus when Gill Templar is not the boss and Siobhan has just lost her greenness in her ears.
The killing of a person in Edinburgh takes Rebus to Glasgow and Aberdeen. In Aberdeen the oil industry has boomed and is now bottoming out, but it still has a lot of money. And with money comes drugs and crime. The book is around crime in the cities of Glasgow and Aberdeen rather than about Edinburgh which it the city in which most of the other Rebus novels are based.
Rebus is not involved in the a case of a serial killing. The killer has been named Johnny Bible who seems to be emulating a serial killer in the past called Bible John. Rebus and his mentor had been involved in the earlier case. He along with his mentor had been involved in implicating a person under dubious conditions. His mentor has died that incident is being dug out once again.
Now Rebus has to fight on three fronts, one to defend himself against the allegation of doctored evidence in the earlier case and other to solve the crime that has been handed down to him and his obsession with finding Johnny Bible to which he has not been officially assigned.
A very good read for fans of Inspector Rebus. It is hard not to feel for what inspector Rebus goes through in these books.
Ian Rankin shows is class in seamlessly weaving up the crime stories around the inspector and his life.

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