The Falls by Ian Rankin

The Falls is the 12th Rebus novel by Ian Rankin. It is the sequel to Set in Darkness, which I read recently, and another very good read.

A young student, Philippa ‘Flip’ Balfour, has vanished in Edinburgh. She is the daughter of a rich banker. With no ransom note and no body, it seems that she has just run away.

Meanwhile, a small doll has been found in a toy coffin, not far from the student’s family home. Could this be connected to her disappearance? Rebus discovers incidents of these tiny coffins dating all the way back to notorious body snatchers, Burke and Hare. He wants to investigate a possible link to Flip’s disappearance, but the powers that be think he is wasting his time.

While trawling through Flip’s computer and mobile phone, DS Siobhan Clarke comes across the link to a mysterious online game she had been playing. Convinced this could be the key to her disappearance, Siobhan plays along, but is she becoming obsessed? And is she putting herself in danger?

In The Falls, Siobhan is now getting equal ‘air time’ to Rebus, as she does in later books, and is starting to do things her way – which often looks rather like Rebus’s way.

Throw in a big promotion for Gill Templer (who has been part of the series right from book 1), a new love interest for Rebus, a dodgy journalist and various officers being offered the press liaison job and there is lot going on in The Falls. But it is never too much, in my opinion.

Published in 2001, the technology in The Falls feels very dated. It was a lot harder to connect to the internet then than it is now, although the officers are all using mobile phones.

The Falls is a Cafferty-free zone. In the introduction, Ian Rankin said that a mentor of his had disliked Cafferty, the Edinburgh gangster who is Rebus’s nemesis and appears in most of the books. So Rankin wrote a book with no Cafferty as a favour to him. Personally, I was happy with that and didn’t miss Cafferty at all.

If you like the Rebus books, I would definitely recommend The Falls. And if you enjoy detective stories but have never read a Rebus novel, I would also recommend it. I’ve been working my way backwards and forwards through the series since autumn 2022 and have got just three books left to read. You could read the whole series, but it’s a big commitment. Although if you start out by reading one or two novels, you might find that you get hooked.