Old dogs, old tricks……    **

The hero, John Rebus is old and retired, the villain, Big Ger Cafferty, is old and on his way out, and unfortunately, Rankin’s writing is old, repetitive, and cliche. Having read all of the Rebus mysteries to date, I was looking forward to another good read. Sadly, I was disappointed.

This book focuses more on Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox, both of whom are not very dynamic characters and were better as sidekicks. The plot has a few twists and turns but relies on worn out story lines to plod through.  Rankin falls into the Michael Connelly trap of spending too much time giving us turn by turn directions as the characters drive from point A to point B.

The previous Rankin novels had a compelling story and kept me turning pages, this one lost me almost from the beginning, but I kept reading thinking it would get better. There were too many characters and nothing about most of them held my interest.

I can only hope this was a dip in the normal great writing of Ian Rankin and he is not following writers like Connelly, Child, and Patterson who will never darken my bookshelf again.

This one gets two stars with a wish on both.