Book Review: A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES by Ian Rankin

A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown and Company, October 2020) Hardcover, 336 pages. ISBN # 031647925X / 9780316479257

Summary on the Goodreads website . . . . .

“He’s gone…"

 

When his daughter Samantha calls in the dead of night, John Rebus knows it’s not good news. Her husband has been missing for two days.

 

Rebus fears the worst – and knows from his lifetime in the police that his daughter will be the prime suspect.

 

He wasn’t the best father – the job always came first – but now his daughter needs him more than ever.  But is he going as a father or a detective?

 

As he leaves at dawn to drive to the windswept coast – and a small town with big secrets – he wonders whether this might be the first time in his life where the truth is the one thing he doesn’t want to find…  

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     The standard police procedural novel is generally a step by step investigation, often a long slog until the murderer or criminal is uncovered in the end. It requires a lot of long hours, and unglamorous paperwork and interviews. 

     A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES is not a thriller that will keep you turning pages. It's a police procedural. However, Ian Rankin is one of the very best at writing them. It's never so much about what the investigation uncovers as it is about the characters and what happens with them during the proceedings. 

     This is the 23rd novel featuring former detective/inspector Alex Rebus, now retired and suffering from COPD. Rankin has allowed his colorful character to age in real time over the series of books. 

    What keeps bringing me back is Rebus, along with his usual companions and friends. It's the very rich characterizations and complexities of his returning cast that keeps me reading Rankin. 

     This one gets a bit more personal for Rebus, as his estranged daughter Samantha is a suspect in a murder investigation that brings him to her small village in northern Scotland. Back in Edinburgh, his good friends Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox are teamed up again investigating the murder of a Saudi student, the son of a rich businessman. 

     Rankin plants some seeds that these two unrelated developments may have a connection, and it doesn't become clearer until Rebus, Clarke and Fox get about doing what they do best: investigate the evidence.

     While Rebus is aging and getting weaker, his mind is still sharp, his investigative and analytical skills as good as ever -- although he comes to doubt them. Some threads are even sown that may play out in the next novel.

     I don't want to give too much away here. I don't want to spoil your pleasure if you've never read an Alex Rebus novel before.