Since I was in Edinburgh, I listened to one of the classic ‘Tartan Noir‘ Inspector Rebus books, A Question of Blood.
Given his contempt for authority, his tendency to pursue investigative avenues of his own choosing, and his habitually ornery manner, it’s a wonder that John Rebus hasn’t been booted unceremoniously from his job as an Edinburgh cop. He certainly tempts that fate again in A Question of Blood, which finds him and his younger partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, trying to close the case of a withdrawn ex-soldier named Lee Herdman, who apparently shot three teenage boys at a Scottish private school, leaving two of them dead, before turning the pistol on himself.
“There’s no mystery,” Siobhan insists at the start of this 14th Rebus novel (following Resurrection Men). “Herdman lost his marbles, that’s all.” However, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Rebus, who’d once sought entry into the same elite regiment in which Herdman served (but ultimately cracked under psychological interrogation), thinks there’s more motive than mania behind this classroom slaughter. …
I could not get into the Ian Rankin presentation at the Edinburgh Book Festival. (Everything popular is sold out quickly.) Same problem with another big name there, Margaret Atwood.
I understand that Exit Music (2007) is supposed to be the 17th and last Rebus book. I’ll put that on my audible wish list.
UPDATE – Exit Music turned out to be his retirement book. But Rebus keeps popping up in subsequent books.
I doubt you could find anyone who left the show unhappy. It’s more poignant right now because U.K. soldiers are dying in Afghanistan. Mothers and Grandmothers were protesting on the High Street during the festival.
I finally got around to one of the only W. Somerset Maugham books I had not read:
The Painted Veil (1925)
… Shallow and lost, Kitty marries the intellectual and passionate Walter Fane, a bacteriologist on leave from the Far East who is madly in love with her. She does this purely so that she can be married before her younger sister, Doris, and to get away from her mother. They move to Hong Kong where, bored by the stifling climate and social mores, Kitty quickly starts an affair with the “perfect” Charles Townsend, the handsome assistant colonial secretary.
When Walter finds out about their affair, he gives Kitty an ultimatum. She must either accompany him to the Chinese interior to deal with a cholera epidemic, risking death, or he will divorce her, causing a scandal, unless Townsend will agree to marry her. …
It’s masterful, as always with Maugham.
The guy may have been a jerk, but he could certainly work words.
As I followed the tale I visualized it as the perfect film for Merchant Ivory.
Surprised was I to find out it was made into a movie in 2006, The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton.
Coca-Cola Light Sango is a blood-orange flavoured variety of Coca-Cola Light/Diet Coke produced by The Coca-Cola Company, available in Belgium and later Luxembourg and France since mid-2006. It is the first variety of Coca-Cola to have been developed outside of the company’s Atlanta, Georgia, headquarters, primarily due to Belgium’s reputation as the world’s top consumer of Coke Light products per capita. Coke Sango’s production is also due, in part, to the success of previous citrus-flavoured varieties of Coke Light in Europe.
Coke Sango’s name is based on sang, the French word for blood, in reference to its blood orange flavouring.Coca-Cola Light Sango
Nickelback is a Canadian rock band formed in Hanna, Alberta by Chad Kroeger, Mike Kroeger, Ryan Peake and then-drummer Brandon Kroeger. Nickelback is one of the most commercially successful Canadian groups, having sold 30 million records worldwide. Nickelback ranks as the 11th best selling music act of the 2000s, also placing as the 2nd best selling foreign act in the US behind The Beatles for the 2000s.
The band is now based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its name originates from the nickel in change that band member Mike Kroeger gave customers at his Starbucks job, he would frequently say, “Here’s your nickel back”.
Nowhere in Africa (German: Nirgendwo in Afrika) is an epic 2001 German film directed by Caroline Link and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Stefanie Zweig. It tells the story of a Jewish family that emigrates to Kenya during World War II to escape the Nazis and run a farm. The film won an 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. …
Rick McCharles 