A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin

A Heart Full of Headstones is the new Rebus novel by Ian Rankin, following on from A Song for the Dark Times. I bought it after seeing Ian Rankin talk about it at Cheltenham Literature Festival this year.

A Heart Full of Headstones starts with Rebus in the dock. He’s been in court many times before as a witness, but this is his first time as the accused. It’s not clear what he is charged with.

The book then goes back a few months. Rebus, retired and in poor health, is summoned by ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, gangster and long-term adversary. Cafferty is in worse health than Rebus and asks the former detective for help in tracking down an old criminal. Cafferty had been blamed for his death, but now it was rumoured he was alive.

Meanwhile, a police officer at the notorious Tynecastle police station is in trouble for domestic abuse. Tynecastle has a reputation for falsifying evidence and taking bribes and even has links to deaths in custody. Claiming PTSD from his time at the station, he is prepared to take all of his colleagues down with him.

Although never stationed at Tynecastle, Rebus had dealings with officers there over the years. He had sailed close to the wind himself many times. His old friend Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke must investigate the domestic abuse case and look at the files to see how bad Tynecastle really was. Is there anything in those files to implicate Rebus?

By the end of the book, I’d forgotten that Rebus had been in court charged with a serious crime. It is not clear right until the last few pages what crime he has committed.

Is this the end of John Rebus? Who knows?

A Heart Full of Headstones has a big cast of interlinked characters – police officers, businesspeople and criminals. It’s quite hard to keep track of who is who and how they all relate to each other.

This is another brilliant read from Ian Rankin. Rebus fans and fans of detective fiction should love it. It is very much of its time with all the police corruption. It is also set against a backdrop of Covid.

Having read the first few Rebus novels a few years ago, I now plan to go back through some of the back catalogue.