Original red cloth, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket. Jaded, stately Edinburgh about to change rapidly.'. Effective, I think, in showing the Jekyll & Hyde side of Edinburgh at that time. Facing the last page is a more extended note, reflecting on the novel's parallels with a real-life scandal, and more generally on its setting: 'A sordid story – much less shocking than its predecessor. A bit too similar to his creator?' 'I tend to forget that in these early novels Rebus is a church-goer.' 'Rebus's sexual identity in the early books is complex'.

Many of the annotations comment on ways in which Rebus's character differs from his later incarnations: 'Rebus is much more bookish/literate in the early novels. ‘Ian Rankin is a genius’ Lee Child A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above. 'public probity & private vice''), the fictionalised Edinburgh setting, the accidental parallels with Trainspotting, and the sources and inspirations for specific details. The second Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES. Promise of Hide and Seek used its central metaphor to suggest security. Rankin's attentive annotations touch on the jacket design, the writing of the book 'in my little flat in Tottenham, while I worked as a hi-fi journalist', the book's echoes of Jekyll and Hyde ('pretty much the overarching theme of the early Rebus novels. In the Rebus detective series by Ian Rankin, the author makes us feel uneasy. Hide & Seek is the second of Rankin's classic series of Inspector Rebus crime novels: in it, Rebus investigates the death of a junkie, ultimately connecting it with a society scandal and with the double nature of Edinburgh itself. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1991.įirst edition, signed on the title and annotated with 766 words on 69 pages.

Hide and seek rankin novel