The Falls: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Inspector Rebus Novels, 12)

Ian Rankin's John Rebus, arguably the most realistic detective in crime fiction, is a brilliant but troubled man. When a young woman goes missing near his native Edinburgh, Scotland, Rebus finds himself just one small cog in the huge wheel of an inquiry set in motion by her powerfully rich father. Struggling to deal with both his own often-terrifying inner demons as well as the monstrous bureaucracy of the investigative team, Rebus finds himself drawn again and again into the case, desperately searching for the girl's salvation, as well as his own. In time Rebus uncovers two leads: one, a carved wooden doll stuffed tightly into a tiny casket, and the other the missing girl's possible involvement in a dark, disturbing Internet-based role-playing game. He enlists the help of the tech-savvy DC Siobhan Clarke, who is young enough to know her way around the net, but who may not be old and wise enough to avoid potentially deadly pitfalls and traps. Meanwhile, Rebus tracks...

"A...beautifully written series." -The New York Times Book Review

When the privileged daughter of a merchant banker disappears, a search through her e-mails uncovers her secret life-and a bizarre correspondence with an on-line game player who delights in macabre puzzles. The first game was for the girl. The next one is for Inspector John Rebus, a man haunted by the impenetrable riddles of his own troubled past. But the lead is soon complicated by an unexpected twist.

"Rankin is the master of the moody, modern police procedural, working on the same high plateau as Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, and P.D. James." -The Wall Street Journal

A hand-carved wooden doll in an eight-inch coffin is found on the grounds of the victim's home-a clue that links her vanishing to the deaths of four other women, and to a centuries-old offense that still scars the grisly history of Edinburgh.

"[A] Brilliant Series."-Entertainment Weekly

From the shadowy world of an Internet stalker to the quicksand of lies in the missing girl's dissolute family, Rebus is led into the soul of evil. And to a shattering crime that only he, a man who treads the fine line between investigative brilliance and personal oblivion, could ever hope to understand.

"Finish one of Rankin's book, and you'll feel you've been taken inside the river body of Edinburgh from top to the darkest bottom, a journey that calls Charles Dickens and Wilke Collins to mind as often as it does Inspector Morse." -Los Angeles Times

New York Times Book Review

The Falls [is] another grimly engrossing procedural in a stylish noir series.

"Rebus is surely one of the most rounded, warts-and-all characters is modern crime fiction ... those who want to plunge deeply into a world of convincing characters and brilliantly rendered atmospherics can't do much better than this." After a young student's strange disappearance, Inspector John Rebus gets a lead in the shape of a carved wooden doll in an eight-inch coffin (found in the student's home village) and an Internet-based role-playing game Edinburgh detective John Rebus gets involved with the case of a missing young woman. His only clues are an Internet-based role-playing game and a wooden doll stuffed into a tiny casket