Mortal Causes
I no longer keep up with Rankin’s books as eagerly as I once did (I think I’m about three books behind the publishing schedule) and I never did get round to reading all the early books (I entered with Black and Blue).
Now I was watching the documentary about Rankin, Rebus and Edinburgh on BBC Four earlier this year and Rankin was back in the Cardenden cul-de-sac he grew up in mentioned about sectarianism in small town Scotland and that he’d eventually dealt with it in a book called Mortal Causes. Now this certainly piqued my interest, because sectarianism is something I have never really understood or really experienced (at least not in it’s red raw guise) despite growing up in a town just five miles away from that Cardenden cul-de-sac.
So when I saw it in a local supermarket for £1.99 I couldn’t resist.
It’s a bloody good book, all the better from not suffering from the bloat that later books are infected with. The brilliant device of a young man being found murdered in Mary King’s Close, terrorist execution style leads you into the plot and from then on in you’re hooked. Rankin covers a lot of ground including sectarianism, gangs and paramilitaries in this one meshing it into a coherent whole with all the skill that would lead to the amazing Black and Blue.
I would very much recommend this book, as a crime novel, as a look at 90’s style terrorism and as a bloody good read.