Resurrection Men. An Inspector Rebus Novel 13

Rebus is back. Resurrection Men, the 13th DI Rebus novel, finds Ian Rankin's doughty detective off the case. He explodes at his superior DCS Gill Templar over the increasingly frustrating murder inquiry into the savage killing of an Edinburgh art dealer and his punishment is a spell cooling his heels at the Scottish Police College in central Scotland. Rebus balks at his "retraining" but he's not alone: he's part of an ill-assorted group of similar officers--all with an attitude problem and a dislike of the institution they find themselves in. Given an old unsolved case to work on the group is obliged to polish up their teamwork while supervisors assess the reprobates. But some of the team have secrets not unconnected to the case they've been handed and Rebus finds that anything goes when it comes to keeping the past obscured.
This is Rankin in top form with Rebus rejuvenated by the edgy new milieu he's dropped into. Complicating things, the Scottish Crime Squad asks Rebus to act as a link to someone who can deliver the inside dirt on an old nemesis, gangster "Big Ger" Cafferty. In Edinburgh, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke has to take over the case of the murdered art dealer and, like Rebus, finds herself getting closer to the unpleasant Mr Cafferty. Forget the miscast John Hannah in the TV movies, this is the real Rebus: gritty, idiomatic and etched in prose that wastes nae a word in its redefining of the crime novel. --Barry Forshaw

Like Edinburgh inspector John Rebus, the resurrection men of the title are treading on thin ice--they've all been sent to a short course at the Scottish Police College because they've failed in some way, generally "an issue with authority." Rebus has been known to have issues of that nature before, which only boosts his credibility with the other cops in attendance, suspected by their bosses of being on the wrong side of the fence, on the take, or even guilty of murder on several previous occasions. The dour Inspector's agenda aims to bring the higher-ups proof of the so-called Wild Bunch's nefarious activities; in the process, his own conduct in the old case he and his college classmates must rework and revisit comes under scrutiny. A solid police procedural whose protagonist, the hero of 14 other titles in this internationally acclaimed series, continues to grow on readers who are just discovering him. --Jane Adams