THE BLACK BOOK

Edinburgh Inspector John Rebus's bad week—his lover throws him out; his ex-dealing, ex-con brother, Mickey, turns up on his doorstep—shows every promise of getting worse. His bosses are determined to pull off a dubious sting against moneylender Morris Gerald Cafferty ("Big Ger"); Rory Kintoul, the stabbing victim who dragged himself down a busy street to collapse in his cousin's butcher shop, won't say a word about who stuck him; word is that child-molester Andrew McPhail, deported from Canada, is back in town and at daggers' points with the stepfather of his alleged victim; and Rebus's mate Brian Holmes's reinvestigation of the five-year-old arson-murder at the Central Hotel gets derailed when he's brained and sent into a coma. (He'll be followed shortly by Mickey, kidnapped and left hanging by his feet from the Forth Rail Bridge.) The cryptic entries in Holmes's little black book— "Central fire. El was there! Poker game on 1st floor. R. Brothers involved (so maybe Mork too??). Try finding"—are a bonanza, showing how the Central fire is at the dark heart of all the other cases. But Rebus will have a tough time running down the links when he's got troubles of his own: The gun he surreptitiously bought from an unsavory old acquaintance turns out to be the murder weapon in the Central shooting. Thick and zesty as a bottomless bowl of Scotch broth. Unspectacular Rebus (Strip Jack, p. 22, etc.) shines right down to the nasty surprise on the last page.