In the 24th instalment in the Inspector Rebus series written by Ian Rankin, both Rebus and his frenemy ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, the gangster, are old.

Rebus had retired in 2007.

Both are a little bored. COVID-19 is a threat but lockdown has ended, probably in 2022.

Cafferty wants Rebus to find a man. Surprisingly, Rebus agrees.

Rebus ends up on trial for a crime. Did he do it?

Rebus both fears exposure of past misdeeds and examines his own motives at the time, trying to ascertain whether, in breaking the rules, he also crossed the moral lines he had drawn for himself.  …

All the Rebus books are great. This one certainly as good as any.

I recommend you start at the beginning:

Knots and Crosses (1987).

Book #23 is excellent. As usual.

I bought it from Audible, not wanting to wait months to get it from the library.

This one is set autumn 2022. It’s topical.

Will Putin try tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine?

Legendary Israeli spy chief Gabriel Allon has only managed to stay retired for 10 months before being called back to save the world.

Most of our favourite characters get called up, as well. And there’s a brilliant and beautiful female master-thief, as well.

If you’ve not read the Gabriel Allon books, I recommend starting at book #1 in the series.

Some feel the 2019 instalment of the Harry Hole series — Knife — is Jo Nesbø’s best.

I can’t disagree.

The worst of the worst happens.

And Svein Finne is back, perhaps Harry’s biggest nemesis.

Harry Hole started drinking again and was kicked out of his home by his wife Rakel.

… Everything changes when one morning he wakes up covered in blood without remembering what happened the previous evening and, a short time later, he discovers that a murder had taken place that night. …

This book is long and complex.

Important to the plot are favorite characters including Kaja Solness, Katrine Bratt, and Bjørn Holm.

And new likeable characters including Sung-Min Larsen, an ambitious one-time student of Harry’s who works for rival law enforcement agency Kripos, and who looks as if he has his eye on Harry’s job.

… Roar Bohr (great name), sharp-shooting ex-special forces in Afghanistan, with a rifle, post-traumatic stress disorder and a score to settle with the man who raped his little sister. …

Crime Review

Publishers Weekly criticized the novel for having an “enormous number of characters, backstories, subplots, and themes” but nonetheless praised its “well-orchestrated” ending.

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The 3rd book (2021) in the P.T. Marsh series is easily the best yet.

… a troubled small-town police detective faced with three interwoven crimes that reveal sinister secrets about his community–and the deaths of his family …

In the years since the mysterious deaths of his wife and child, P.T. Marsh, a police detective in the small Georgia town of Mason Falls, has faced demons–both professional and personal.

But when he is called to the scene of a school shooting, the professional and personal become intertwined, and he suspects that whoever is behind the crime may be connected to his own family tragedy.

As Marsh and his partner Remy investigate the shooting, they discover that it is far from straightforward, and their search for answers leads them to a conspiracy at the highest levels of local government–including within the police force. …

Fantastic Fiction

Another in the excellent genre of books by female authors with female protagonists — psychological thrillers.

All are compared with Girl on the Train. (2015)

Or the “the next Gone Girl (2012).

Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.

Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone.

As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister.

Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion. …

gillymacmillan.com

One of the hottest best sellers right now, The Covenant of Water is an ambitious, well researched novel.

Abraham Verghese is a Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford. The medical detail in this book is accurate. Part is set in a leper colony.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. …

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I was a big fan, too, of his 2009 book Cutting for Stone.

The 2022 book in the Colter Shaw series is excellent.

Twist and turns. Surprises. Typical Deaver.

Allison Parker is on the run with her teenage daughter, Hannah, are fleeing her ex-husband who’s just been unexpectedly released from prison.

Two hitmen are also hot on her heels—an eerie pair of thugs who take delight not only in murder but in the sport of devising clever ways to make bodies disappear forever. 

Colter Shaw has been hired by her eccentric boss, entrepreneur Marty Harmon, to find and protect her.

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