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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} the Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin the Naming of the Dead : Book Summary and Reviews of the Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin The Naming of the Dead : Book summary and reviews of The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin. The leaders of the free world descend on Scotland for an international conference, and every cop in the country is needed for front-line duty. except one. John Rebus's reputation precedes him, and his bosses don't want him anywhere near Presidents Bush and Putin, which explains why he's manning an abandoned police station when a call comes in. During a preconference dinner at Edinburgh Castle, a delegate has fallen to his death. Accident, suicide, or something altogether more sinister? And is it linked to a grisly find close to the site of the gathering? Are the world's most powerful men at risk from a killer? While the government and secret services attempt to hush the whole thing up, Rebus knows he has only seventy-two hours to find the answers. Reviews "Beyond the Book" articles Free books to read and review (US only) Find books by time period, setting & theme Read-alike suggestions by book and author Book club discussions and much more! Just $12 for 3 months or $39 for a year. Reviews. Media Reviews. "Rankin deftly captures the mad circus. of the G8 summit, but this background muddies the narrative waters." - PW. "Required reading for crime-fiction followers." - Booklist. "Surprisingly, this entry in the Rebus series is not as dark or grisly as preceding novels—so if you've been wanting to introduce someone to the world of DI Rebus, you could start with this book. Strongly recommended." - Library Journal. "The world would be better off if Rebus attended the peace summits instead of getting bogged down with the usual posturing officeholders and violent anarchists." - Kirkus. This information about The Naming of the Dead shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added. Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published. Summit's up with Rebus. Ian Rankin's 16th Inspector Rebus novel is a big, sometimes elegiac, read set against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous weeks in recent Scottish history: the G8 summit meeting in Edinburgh in July 2005. But this is no disguised political tract; instead, Rankin digs deeper into Rebus's psyche and continues to explore themes of justice and retribution, impermanence, loss and regret. Rebus is the same truculent character he has always been and impending old age - his 60th birthday and consequent retirement - is preying on his mind. The Naming of The Dead (Rankin took the title from a ceremony to honour those who had died in Iraq which took place in Edinburgh in 2005) has a nice initial premise. While every cop and his dog is pulling overtime to cope with the daily marches and demonstrations surrounding the summit, Rebus has been sidelined. Who wants him getting close to world leaders? But when a body is discovered in a spooky glade in Auchterarder (the location of the summit), Rebus, as the only person left in the office, is assigned the case and finds himself visiting the G8 after all. Almost immediately, he clashes with the English police commander in charge of G8 security. Before long, he has everybody's backs up as he explores the possibility that an MP's drop off Edinburgh Castle's ramparts was murder, not suicide, and that a serial killer is preying on convicted rapists harvested from a vigilante website. Meanwhile, the nearest person Rebus has to a close friend - Siobhan Clarke - is also at odds with her superiors as she attempts to find the riot cop who clobbered her liberal mother during one of the many demonstrations. She's also getting entangled with Rebus's nemesis, thuggish crime boss Big Ger Cafferty, who is showing an unhealthy interest in her while getting in the way of Rebus's investigations. That's a lot of plot (nor is it all of it), but the strength of the novel lies in the way that Rankin weds it to his exploration of character: we get more insight into Clarke as she struggles with her relationship with her academic parents. Throughout, Rebus is brooding on his age and increasing isolation, thinking about the unexpected death of his brother and the way he has messed up with the rest of his family. If that sounds gloomy, it isn't. There's still the humour, the dodgy rock music and Rebus's big-heartedness. And the detective inspector at odds with his superiors? Just the way he likes it. The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin. - Return to top of the page - See our review for fuller assessment. Review Summaries Source Rating Date Reviewer Entertainment Weekly A- 30/3/2007 Will Boisvert The Independent . 27/10/2006 Frances Fyfield NZZ . 18/3/2008 Rainer Moritz The NY Times Book Rev. 8/4/2007 Marilyn Stasio The Observer . 12/11/2006 Peter Guttridge The Scotsman A 13/10/2006 Allan Massie Sunday Times . 22/10/2006 David Horspool The Washington Post . 23/4/2007 Patrick Anderson. "Rankin again paints a corrupt world (even Bono's antipoverty crusade is suspect) in convincing shades of gray" - Will Boisvert, Entertainment Weekly. - Return to top of the page - The Naming of the Dead is set at the beginning of July, 2005, during a busy time as everyone is preparing for (and then involved in) a G8 summit and the events surrounding it -- and all the protesters that come with that. (The action is largely set in and around Edinburgh, but on 7 July there are also those London bombings in the background.) There's a huge police presence, with officers trucked in from far and wide for Operation Sorbus ("the policing plan for G8 week"), but they don't want DI John Rebus anywhere near any of that and so he is conveniently left pretty much to his own devices. Conveniently, too, a bit of evidence regarding an old case crops up. The G8 summit makes for a few hurdles to any proper investigation, but Rebus and trusty sidekick Siobhan Clarke (who actually gets to head up this part of the investigation) manage to convince the powers that be to let them do some sniffing around for a while. The case involves a six-year-old murder, of rapist Cyril Colliar. The murderer had apparently taken a trophy, and that has now turned up -- along with evidence from the deaths of two other seedy characters. After getting out of prison Colliar had gone to work for Rebus' nemesis, 'Big Ger' Morris Gerald Cafferty, and Siobhan knows this is an opportunity Rebus won't let pass by: The Naming of the Dead – Ian Rankin. My chaotic relationship with Inspector Rebus continues. This is also the last of my October Cyprus vacation crime-reading spree. The others were: The Winner by David Baldacci, Camino Island by John Grisham, Run Away by Harlan Coben, Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré (who sadly recently passed away), The Whistler by John Grisham and In The Woods by Tana French. October and the miraculous beach holiday of 2020 feel very far away, but writing this review also give me a bit of a closure for the year. This time we’re meeting Rebus in 2005. He’s nearing retirement, but Edinburgh is bustling with the G8 summit at Gleneagles about to take place. It is all hands on deck, or almost all, as Rebus is kept to the side, given his penchant for speaking his mind in the worst possible moment. And all would be well if not for the death of MP Ben Wester, who has fallen of the Edinburgh Castle. Apparently committing suicide, but then who would commit suicide on a gala dinner, so Rebus has his doubts. At the same time there seems to be a serial killer roaming around murdering previous offenders and leaving their clothes in a Clootie Well. Siobhan gets to lead this investigation, as if she didn’t have enough on her mind, with her parents coming to town to participate in anti-globalization protests. Being long term activists they have hard time accepting Siobhan’s choice of the career. She on the other hand craves their approval. Given that she’s in charge of the investigation she is becoming Rebus’ superior, but it looks like that’s in name only, as he is as much his own man as always. Focused solely on the outcomes he cuts through the red tape with gardening shears. Making a ton of new enemies in the process, but it’s never stopped him before. This time because of the Gleneagles summit, the final outcome of the bid for 2012 Olympic games and the 7/7 bombings our usual cast of characters is set also across the broader political landscape. It’s not only about Rebus and Cafferty, or Siobhan balancing the line between doing the right thing and doing it right. The fact that so many police forces are focused on the G8 summit enabled 7/7 to happen and the feeling of being brutally tricked is palpable among the officers in Edinburgh.
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