Edinburgh certainly has two sides to it – one rich and glitzy that the rich and the tourists see, and the poor dark grim side where the poor and those on the bottom rungs of society – needles hanging from their arms and poison in their blood.

Rebus Edinburgh is just as grim as ever – cold damp nights, shadowy figures on the cobbled streets, dim street lights, druggies and the possibility of a black magic cult. Rebus even reads the novel when he’s relaxing from the stresses of work. Many of the character names such as Poole, Carew are directly inspired by the classic novel. In his opening note, Rankin states that he was keen to get readers more closely connected to this Scottish link and so this second book was actually called Hyde and Seek for a working title. In the first novel Knots and Crosses, the book has a close link to the classic Scottish novel Jekyll and Hyde. Original red cloth, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket.Scotland comes alive in this novel and has an interesting link to the city in which it is set. Jaded, stately Edinburgh about to change rapidly.'. Effective, I think, in showing the Jekyll & Hyde side of Edinburgh at that time. Facing the last page is a more extended note, reflecting on the novel's parallels with a real-life scandal, and more generally on its setting: 'A sordid story – much less shocking than its predecessor. A bit too similar to his creator?' 'I tend to forget that in these early novels Rebus is a church-goer.' 'Rebus's sexual identity in the early books is complex'. Many of the annotations comment on ways in which Rebus's character differs from his later incarnations: 'Rebus is much more bookish/literate in the early novels. 'public probity & private vice''), the fictionalised Edinburgh setting, the accidental parallels with Trainspotting, and the sources and inspirations for specific details.

Rankin's attentive annotations touch on the jacket design, the writing of the book 'in my little flat in Tottenham, while I worked as a hi-fi journalist', the book's echoes of Jekyll and Hyde ('pretty much the overarching theme of the early Rebus novels. Hide & Seek is the second of Rankin's classic series of Inspector Rebus crime novels: in it, Rebus investigates the death of a junkie, ultimately connecting it with a society scandal and with the double nature of Edinburgh itself. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1991.įirst edition, signed on the title and annotated with 766 words on 69 pages.

Hide and seek rankin