Customer Reviews

The Hanging Garden

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Any novel named after a Cure song must be good. Amongst Ian Rankin's previous jobs was a stint as a punk musician, so this choice of title is quite appropriate for that reason. The title also refers to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. However, Rankin's main character, Detective Inspector John Rebus, does not himself appear to be an article of antiquity or an early 80s throwback (much the same thing). Rebus works in the gritty city of Edinburgh (see Irving Welsh's FILTH). With crime boss Big Ger Cafferty in gaol, a vacuum has opened up in Edinburgh's underworld. Tommy Telford is the man moving in on Cafferty's patch. Rebus' bosses are intent that he should not get involved, and so assign him to a war crimes case involving an elderly Nazi. But then Rebus' daughter is knocked down in a suspect hit and run. Is someone gunning out after Rebus? And what will Rebus do when he discovers the identity of the driver? This is a well crafted, subtle novel on the theme of revenge, with repercussions from the Second World War to the modern Chechen conflict. And Ian Rankin is not a one to provide easy answers. This is a novel which will certainly have you searching your own soul. It's also the best British crime novel I've read this year, and was the winner of the 1997 CWA Gold Dagger for fiction.

This is my first Ian Rankin novel and it will definitely not be my last. John Rebus is a complex character who is battling his own personal demons. He is an Edinburgh Detective Inspector who is a recovering alcoholic and who is trying to reconnect with his daughter, Sammy, after many years of separation.

In this novel, Sammy is a victim of a hit-and-run and is currently unconscious in the hospital; a gang war is brewing and seems that the Yakuza might be involved; and an elderly man is being investigated as a Nazi war criminal. Rebus is trying to save Karina, a Bosnian refugee who is working as a prostitute in the streets of Edinburgh. Rankin does an excellent job with characterization giving depth to all the supporting players involved in the story. He focuses on their strengths as well as their weaknesses and does a great job in showing irony on several occasions.

The author knows how to structure the story. He makes use of flashbacks without warning the readers. It helps one to appreciate the then as well as the now. The story is not linear and it helps one to understand the motivation of most of the characters. I enjoyed my first John Rebus novel and I hope that all the others are as good as this one.

The book Dead Souls was my first Inspector Rebus book and I thought it was excellent. I bought it on holiday in Australia and could not put it down until I had finished it. The stories were very real and the situations very descriptive. The plots were good with plenty of twists and I did not work out the endings for most of them until the end. It was good how the different investigations overlapped and the story kept moving at pace. There were no chapters where I found the story becoming slow and I was not tempted to skip a few paragraphs. The characters were real although he brought people together from differing backgrounds, cultures and countries. The released prisoner's character was scary and at times the book was almost disturbing. I will now go on to read other Inspector Rebus novels.

Ian Rankin captivates the reader again with this intriguing novel about gang turf wars, Nazi war criminals, prostitutes shipped to Britain from Bosnia, and crooked business deals with Japanese gangsters. Reality hits home when personal tragedy confronts Inspector John Rebus - his daughter is the target of a hit-and-run which appears to be related to the cases Inspector Rebus is currently pursuing. As usual, he becomes irretrievably involved in all these sub-plots to the detriment of his personal and professional relationships. This is all par for the course as Inspector Rebus cannot help but find some sort of tie-in between each case. Ian Rankin puts a very real face on the workings of a city's police force. The humor is always there with great one-liners courtesy of Inspector Rebus, usually uttered when he is on the carpet in front of his superiors. And there's an unexpected and interesting twist at the end.

Rankin manages to intertwine multiple stories and numerous great characters without ever losing his reader. Then, he neatly ties it all up in the end, without ever having a contrived feel.

Eagles: There's a new kid in town

Thomas (Tommy) Telford has come to Edinburgh, and is in the process of taking over Morris Gerald (Big Ger) Cafferty's turf. One of the first casualties turns out to be Rebus' daughter Samantha. It's been hard enough for John, having his daughter working with ex-cons but now she's taken up with a writer-cum-journalist.

While investigating a potential escaped nazi, who came to scotland just after the war and taught at a local college. His investigation leads him to Telfond's mentor, Jake Tarawicz who is based in Newcastle, some Japanese Yakuza who are looking to buy a golf course in the area. During this time he also rescues a prossie who turns out to be an illegal Bosnian, smuggled over the border and forced to work in the sex trade.

With everyone and his brother (and sister) involved in one or two of the concurrent cases he is working on, John is busier than a one armed bartender. He's been on the wagon for five months and has only slipped once. His sponsor, Jack Morton is there at the phone when he needs him, and on the job undercover.

It's hard to believe that in 335 pages, he manages to deal with his daughter's trauma, his ex-wife, ex(?)girlfriend Patience, the hooker, his brother, Siobhan, Jack, Abernathey from London, an ad-hoc member of a Jewish group tracking down nazis, members of three gangs, their bosses and lieutenants, and a problem with customs in Inverness airport. Surprisingly, no one seems to get short-schrift.

As the series has gone along, it has continued to be new and different, without the books becoming formulaic. Let's hope this continues.

Lately I've been leaning more on Amazon reviews to sort through the vast inventory of mystery writing now available, particularly for writers that I don't know much about, but also for well-known and prolific authors like Ian Rankin. That as a preface to my real enjoyment of "The Hanging Garden," which I ordered based on reviews posted here.

This 1998 John Rebus yarn has the characteristic layered plot lines and beautifully detailed character studies of Rankin's better novels. The setting is Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland, though this a rough landscape, which fits the gritty stories being told. It surely doesn't encourage much thought of tourism there the way an Alexander McCall-Smith story might.

As for the protagonist, Detective Inspector John Rebus, this novel catches him at a transitional point in his life. He's on the wagon, dealing with a lot of self-guilt and a serious crisis involving his daughter and reviewing the aftermath of a failed marriage. He is still a driven man professionally, which ultimately leads to the resolution of the several plot lines that Rankin has structured into the book.

Way above average crime novel. Highly recommended.

Welcome to the dark side of Edinburgh! Once again Inspector John Rebus has a job in the Scottish City. This time it seems that he is painfully, personally involved - his daughter, Sammy, is in a coma after being hit by a car. And he had been hiding a Bosnian girl made prostitute by one of the gangs fighting for dominance over the city, in her apartment...

In "The Hanging Garden" (the first Rankin book I have tried - very encouraging!) perhaps the most interesting thing is the personality of Inspector Rebus and his private phobias and the reminiscences of past mistakes, which seem to overwhelm him quite often as he is immersing himself deeper and deeper into his work. Now he is trying to find out if Joseph Lintz, the retired professor and German immigrant, is a mass murderer from World War II and at the same time to put the Edinburgh emerging mobster, Tommy Telford, behind bars. The Japanese mafia, Yakuza, appears at the scene, as well as the Serbian disfigured gangster Jake Tarawicz from Newcastle, a corrupted Dr Colquhoun, Rebus' ex-wife, Sammy's nosy journalist boyfriend... There is a little too much thrown in for my taste, the plot is very twisted and seems that the author entangled himself too much in it at some point.

Nevertheless, it is worth reading for all those who like Rebus and his complicated mind. His psychological portrait is one of the best in the contemporary mystery fiction. The Edinburgh from Rankin's novels is also much different from its tourist side (which I saw and loved), much more shady and dirty, with all the social classes present and great descriptions of various locations.

It's perhaps a bit inaccurate to call the Rebus novels "mysteries" in that there is often little mystery to the goings-on. Rankin is a very good writer, but what he does best is setting up strong, shocking, and sometimes moving police precedurals around seeming mysteries. Like the other Rebus books I've read, the resolution to the main mysteries is a bit weak, especially when compared to the other events in the book.

So that alone puts the Rebus books a bit below the Morse or Dalgleish novels. However, John Rebus is almost as memorable as a plainclothesman as his English counterparts, rougher around the edges than either, hard to take but sympathetic. He makes the books move as he bounces around, as we see him through the eyes of his colleagues and his enemies. He's not an easy hero to like, but is an easy man to feel for. The rest of the cast, some totally heinous, others much more pure, set him to sharp relief. And the setting, while most likely not at all the true Edinburgh, helps a lot too.

Compared to American novles of this ilk, this series is a stunning gem. Mystery and police drama fans alike could do far worse.

The Hanging Garden is about John Rebus and several investigations concerning (1) a local gang war; (2) the hit and run attack on his daughter; and (3) a person who is possibly a WWII Nazi who has escaped prosecution. Rebus has lots of depth. His problems with alcohol and his family are well documented. He struggles with his problems, as in previous novels. This lends a depth to him. His efforts to determine whether the possible nazi was really a nazi are interesting. The retired nazi is a well-drawn character with lots of quirks to keep the reader guessing about whether he is or is not a nazi. The book is well-plotted and is believable. The writing is solid.