BROWSE THROUGH

Mystery books by Ian Rankin

1 The Hanging Garden

2 Fleshmarket Alley

3 Mortal Causes

4 Hide and Seek

5 The Black Book

All books paperbacks, from pocket books, at Rs 400

What the books are about

The Hanging Garden:

Detective Inspector John Rebus is buried under a pile of paperwork generated by his investigations into a suspected war criminal, and his immediate supervisors are more than happy to have him tucked away in a quiet backwater for several months. However, the escalating dispute between upstart Tommy Telford and Big Ger Cafferty’s gang soon gives Rebus an escape clause. Telford is known to have close ties to a man nicknamed Mr Pink Eyes, a brutal gangster running a lucrative business bringing Chechen refugees into Britain to work as prostitutes. And when Rebus takes under his wing a distraught Bosnian call girl, it gives him a personal reason to make sure that Telford does take the high road right out of town. Within days, Rebus’s daughter is the victim of an all-too-professional hit-and-run, and Rebus knows that there’s nothing he won’t do to bring down the prime suspect Tommy Telford to justice— even if it means cutting a hard deal with the devil.

Fleshmarket Alley:

Inspector John Rebus has confronted Edinburgh’s most hardened criminals, its bloodiest crime scenes, and its most dangerous backstreets — but nothing could prepare him for what he finds on Fleshmarket Alley. In the city’s red-light district, men go to live out their fantasies or so many of them think to begin with , and women with no other choice sell their bodies to make a fast and pretty buck. It’s a neighborhood of lost inhibitions, forsaken scruples, and dreams, shattered even before they were conceived. In its seediest clubs, refugees seeking asylum in Scotland are subjected to the whims of the most ruthless characters in the crime world — men whom Rebus knows all too well.

Mortal causes:

In Edinburgh you’re never far from a peaceful spot, or from a hellish one either. Now, in the heart of summer, in the midst of a nationalist festival, Inspector John Rebus is on the murder case of a young man left hanging in a spot where his screams would never be heard. To find the victim’s hidden identity — and the identity of his killer — Rebus searches from Edinburgh’s most violent neighbourhood to Belfast, Northern Ireland — amongst petty thugs, gunrunners, and heavyweight criminals. But before Rebus can get to the truth, the enemy draws first blood. Rebus returns scarred and bloodied by the dream of society’s madmen—and staring into the glint of a killer’s eyes.

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