Rating: 
Summary: Interesting introduction to the series.
Review: Lacks the complex, inter-twining plot and characters of his excellent later novels. The plot is a little run of the mill and the resolution predictable.It does fill in a lot of details about JR's past.
Rating: 
Summary: Good start to the series
Review: Read about Ian Rankin in a magazine and thought I would start at the beginning of the series. Ian Rankin is a very good author, the pages fly by at a quick and enjoyable pace. But what is lacking is the initiative for the reader to figure out who the guilty party is. Not to spoil anything but about two-thirds of the way through the book a silly plot device is thrown in and the murderer identified. What is wrong with this is that the reader cannot possibly have figured out who the murderer is during the first 175 pages of the book which is a key component of why I read mysteries. Still, very well written and hope to read the entire series.
Rating:
Summary: Good start to the series
Review: Read about Ian Rankin in a magazine and thought I would start at the beginning of the series. Ian Rankin is a very good author, the pages fly by at a quick and enjoyable pace. But what is lacking is the initiative for the reader to figure out who the guilty party is. Not to spoil anything but about two-thirds of the way through the book a silly plot device is thrown in and the murderer identified. What is wrong with this is that the reader cannot possibly have figured out who the murderer is during the first 175 pages of the book which is a key component of why I read mysteries. Still, very well written and hope to read the entire series.
Rating:
Summary: Dry, dark, humorless police procedural
Review: Recent installments of the Rebus series (Black & Blue, Dead Souls and Set in Darkness) have garnished a fair amount of critical acclaim and awards. I thought I'd check out the series from the beginning. It may be a long time before I get to the books that won the awards. Knots & Crosses is a competently written police procedural set in Scotland. It was, at least for me, a bit of chore to read. The bleakness was the difficulty. A nasty child murderer is sought. Rebus is a bit too stereotypical - divorced, alienated, chain smoking loner with a past that the reader has to guess about. With the exception of some tourist info (meaningless to me, having never been there), there just is no relief for the reader. While everything is resolved in the end, the reader doesn't get many clues to chew on in the process of the novel. Bottom-line: I'd give this two and a half stars if the system allowed. Fans of British police procedurals may like this better but I'd rather read Daziel & Pascoe or Inspector Barnaby.
Rating:
Summary: The Beginning Of A GREAT Series
Review: Someone is strangling children in Edinburgh. Inspector John Rebus starts receiving what he thinks are crank letters, each enclosing a small neatly tied knot. While investigating the serial strangler, Rebus takes the reader with him on a tour of the seedy side of Scotland's second city. Along the way we learn that Rebus has lost his marriage, has forgotten how to communicate with his young daughter, drinks too much and feels and acts the loner. We meet the other detectives and minor characters that flesh out the story so well. While Rebus starts to see where all the clues are pointing, the reader is completely drawn into the story. Rankin set out to write a modern day parallel to Jekyll and Hyde, not a crime fiction book at all. But the result is the beginning of the best mystery series I've yet to read. Inspector Rebus is fascinating enough to carry a book by himself, but the mystery is absorbing, thought-provoking and makes this book a fast paced page turner. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Ian Rankin has penned a masterpiece with this series. I hope you will read them all.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid!
Review: The character of John Rebus is very realistic and very easy to get to know. He is strong on the outside but troubled inside; his memories of being in the army give him nightmares and sometimes even attack him during the day. Just like all of us, there are ghosts in his past that he refuses to talk about. I like how Rankin leaves most of the details of Rebus's life for us to wonder about until the end of the novel. The style is similar to John Patterson's. The plot is not overly imaginative, but is realistic and interesting enough to make the book an easy and enjoyable read. The thing that I like most about Ian Rankin is his long, vivid descriptions. "These were the books that lay around his living-room. His books for reading tended to congregate in the bedroom, lying in co-ordinated rows on the floor like patients in a doctor's waiting-room." and "Modern killers bragged of their crimes to their friends, then played pool in their local pub, chalking their cues with poise and certainty, knowing which balls would drop in which order... While a police-car slept nearby, its occupants unable to do anything save curse the mountains of rules and regulations and rue the deep chasms of crime. It was everywhere, crime. It was the life-force and the blood and the balls of life: to cheat, to edge; to take that body-swerve at authority, to kill." I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good crime novel, to any lovers of Patterson or Connelly.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid!
Review: The character of John Rebus is very realistic and very easy to get to know. He is strong on the outside but troubled inside; his memories of being in the army give him nightmares and sometimes even attack him during the day. Just like all of us, there are ghosts in his past that he refuses to talk about. I like how Rankin leaves most of the details of Rebus's life for us to wonder about until the end of the novel. The style is similar to John Patterson's. The plot is not overly imaginative, but is realistic and interesting enough to make the book an easy and enjoyable read. The thing that I like most about Ian Rankin is his long, vivid descriptions. "These were the books that lay around his living-room. His books for reading tended to congregate in the bedroom, lying in co-ordinated rows on the floor like patients in a doctor's waiting-room." and "Modern killers bragged of their crimes to their friends, then played pool in their local pub, chalking their cues with poise and certainty, knowing which balls would drop in which order... While a police-car slept nearby, its occupants unable to do anything save curse the mountains of rules and regulations and rue the deep chasms of crime. It was everywhere, crime. It was the life-force and the blood and the balls of life: to cheat, to edge; to take that body-swerve at authority, to kill." I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good crime novel, to any lovers of Patterson or Connelly.
Rating: 
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: The series featuring DS John Rebus has been around for a while and is very popular in the UK. Therefore I decided to pick up the first novel. I was very surprised indeed. It is a very strong,dark and gloomy thriller set against the unusual background of Edinburgh. The DS is a drop out of the army's elite unt, SAS and has become a veteran policeman."A good, but not very good one"according to his boss. The city is haunted by a serial killer who goes for little girls, without harming them sexually. John is receiving all kinds of notes which are written as riddles. He neglects them for a while but with the help of his brother he finds a connection in his past to the killer and goes on a haunt. The hunt is not heroical and leaves a lot of scars for the people involved. In particular Rebus himself is on the receiving end. The story is written so tightly that you can't help wanting to finish it in one setting and leaves a lot of looking forward to the next installments. A good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't bother
Review: This book contains the two things that I hate to find in a mystery book -- a contrived plot which depends on unbelievable coincidences, and a main character with hang-ups coming out his wazoo. The only reason it gets two stars instead of one is that it's well-written.
Rating:
Summary: Knotty problems from Ian Rankin
Review: What a pleasure it is to discover an untapped mystery series. It was almost purely by chance that I picked up Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses, but it will be with eagerness that I pursue the other books about John Rebus of the Edinburgh police force. Knots and Crosses is in part a classic police procedural that takes place in the seamy side of Edinburgh that guidebooks never show and that tourists never suspect. The hunted criminal is a serial killer - "But here, in Edinburgh. It's intolerable." The book is also a fascinating psychological mystery with the events of the present rooted in the past and shaped by the meetings of minds. The intricate but never stretched plot is full of unexpected interconnections among the cast of characters. The chief joy in reading the novel comes from the writing itself. As the title and the detective's name hint, we're in for word play and words loaded with meaning. Thrown in is some hypnotism, excesses of tobacco, sex, and alcohol, a love of books and literature, and love. As the investigation heats and the killer has the "police force tied in knots," Rebus "was feeling like the detective in a cheap thriller and wished that he could turn to the last page." We are lucky; this is not a cheap thriller and we enjoy every page up to the very satisfying last.
| 
