I have just finished reading “The Hanging Garden”, a Rebus novel by Ian Rankin. This is one of the better Rebus novels so far in the series in my opinion, cleverly weaving together several plot strands and leaving you in no doubt as you work through the pages that a big finish was in store. The main plot line centres round a battle between rival “bad men” Tommy Telford (muscling into Edinburgh from Glasgow) and “Big Ger” Cafferty but the proceedings also involve a Newcastle based Chechen gangster, Japanese criminals and a separate (mostly) plot relating to a World War 2 atrocity. Along the way Rebus’s passion to take the criminals down is fuelled by his desire to extract revenge for his daughter being the victim of a hit-and-run incident.
If all of this sounds a little complex and far-fetched, that’s just me trying to lost the main elements of the plot because Ian Rankin is a master of keeping everything under control and the reader hooked into the unfolding story.
Having finished this Rebus novel I’ve now filled the gap in my sequence of these books as noted in my 2010 entry on “Mortal Causes”. So now some of the things I read in later books make a bit more sense… It also means though that the next time I pick up a Rebus novel I’m going to have to make a mental jump forwards in time to catch back up with the older Rebus again.
Tim O'Hare 