Ian Rankin is back on splendid form with The Naming of the Dead (Orion, £17.99). The novel is set in the week of the G8 meetings at Gleneagles in 2005 when thousands gathered in Edinburgh and around the hotel demanding that the politicians ‘make poverty history’. Rebus, sidelined from protecting the foreigners from the populace, finds himself at odds with the official desire to keep things running smoothly when an idealistic MP falls, or is pushed, from the battlements of Edinburgh castle during a drinks party for the notables attending the G8 shindig. But no sooner does he start stirring things up nicely than he is sidetracked by a murder inquiry into the killing of a rapist whose death looks as if it is tied to two other deaths of sexual predators. It seems that Rebus and Siobhan, his only friend and sidekick on the force, are looking for a serial killer. There are a couple of other sub-plots, one involving Siobhan’s self-regarding parents who are reliving their exhilarating younger hippie days by camping and protesting, the other concerning a maverick town councillor who has a way of turning up in trouble spots. As usual there is the brooding presence of Cafferty, Edinburgh’s leading criminal who has fingers in most pies and who tries reeling Siobhan into his clutches. As is often the case in Rankin’s novels Rebus has little satisfaction at the end of the chase. But for the reader the wildly waving strands of the story are safely knotted, despite the obstruction of sinister MI5 agents whose agenda is very different from that of Rebus.

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