![Umschlagbild für Exit Music [electronic resource] :](https://images.yourcloudlibrary.com/delivery/img?type=DOCUMENTIMAGE&documentID=apfkbr9&token=nobody "Umschlagbild für Exit Music [electronic resource] :")
Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung
It's late in the fall in Edinburgh and late in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he is simply trying to tie up some loose ends before his retirement, a new case lands on his desk: a dissident Russian poet has been murdered in what looks like a mugging gone wrong.
Rebus discovers that an elite delegation of Russian businessmen is in town, looking to expand its interests. And as Rebus's investigation gains ground, someone brutally assaults a local gangster with whom he has a long history.
Has Rebus overstepped his bounds for the last time? Only a few days shy of the end to his long, controversial career, will Rebus even make it that far?
Rezensionen (6)
Publisher's Weekly-Rezension
Insp. John Rebus has just 10 days to solve the apparently motiveless murder of Alexander Todorov, an expatriate Russian poet, before he reaches 60 and mandatory retirement in Edgar-winner Rankin's rewarding 17th novel to feature the Edinburgh detective (after The Naming of the Dead). When the dogged Rebus and Det. Sgt. Siobhan Clarke look into the crime, they find an array of baffling conspiracies involving Russian businessmen, Scottish bankers and local politicians pushing for an independent Scotland. A second murder, of a man who'd taped one of Todorov's poetry readings, ensures the case gets extra resources, and Rebus's own interest is whetted by the possible involvement of Edinburgh crime boss Big Ger Cafferty. Clever, insightful prose more than compensates for the byzantine plot. There's an appropriately wistful tone to this final entry in the series. Fans will miss Rebus and wonder what on earth he'll do in retirement. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Talk of the devil - though not, alas, for much longer if, as Rankin says, this really is John Rebus's swansong. He's due to retire in 10 days and his last case, a mugging in a cobbled street off the Grassmarket, looks pretty routine. Except that the victim turns out to be a dissident Russian poet (the Litvinenko poisoning case is still in the news), and the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, desperate to woo a high-powered delegation of Russian bankers, suggests that Rebus keep his investigations low-key. Diplomacy, as anyone familiar with the dour DI knows, is not Rebus's bag. Things come to a head when Big Ger Cafferty, king of the Edinburgh underworld and still an unresolved thorn in Rebus's flesh, is brutally attacked. Atmosphere, pace, plot - Rankin's skill as a storyteller never falters, but my enjoyment was spoiled by the thought that never again will DS Siobhan Clarke call round to her boss's flat and share yet another of his disgusting Indian carry-outs. Orion's handsome boxed set of the first 10 Rebus novels comes out next month for a hefty pounds 150, considering they are all heavily abridged. Aficionados will probably prefer Rebus unabridged from ukaudiobooks.com. They are not cheap, but at least you get every last Deuchars IPA pint in the Oxford Bar and every pithy quip. Caption: article-audio29.2 Talk of the devil - though not, alas, for much longer if, as Rankin says, this really is John Rebus's swansong. He's due to retire in 10 days and his last case, a mugging in a cobbled street off the Grassmarket, looks pretty routine. - Sue Arnold.
Kirkus-Rezension
Say it ain't so: Rebus retires. Having reached mandatory retirement age, Detective Inspector John Rebus has just ten days left before leaving Edinburgh's Gayfield Square police station. While he tries to interest his partner, Det. Sgt. Siobhan Clarke, in keeping his unsolved cases open, the pair is sent off to King's Stables Road, where a dissident Russian poet has come to an unsightly end. It might have been a mugging, but Rebus doubts it: There's too much fury in the killing, whose blood trail wends back to a car park. Tracing the poet's last hours turns up a curry dinner with a recording engineer, who dies when his tape archives go up in flames, and an odd group of drinking companions at the posh Caledonian Hotel, including a wealthy Russian businessman and Rebus's old nemesis Big Ger Cafferty, who controls most of Edinburgh's slums, drugs and vice. With Scottish Nationalists once more urging independence and entrepreneurial Russians angling to buy up much of the country with Cafferty as middleman, could the dead poet have upset negotiations? When the case becomes a hot potato, Rebus, overstepping bounds, is suspended three days before his retirement. The case ends with a triple-twist conclusion. One can only hope that as Conan Doyle revived Holmes and John Harvey brought back Charlie Resnick, Rankin will allow Rebus (The Naming of the Dead, 2007, etc.) several encores. Meanwhile, he goes out with panache and his usual ability to see through flummery. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist-Rezension
*Starred Review* Twilight is the operative word for UK crime fiction this fall. First, John Harvey brings back the great Charlie Resnick (Cold in Hand), only to leave the Nottingham inspector slouching toward retirement with a new tragedy to bear. And now Ian Rankin hands a gold watch to the ever-curmudgeonly John Rebus. With only a few days until he's officially retired, Rebus isn't going gently into any good nights, though he's not above feeling a bit maudlin: Ciggies, booze, and a little night music. What else did he have? Fortunately, he has one last meaty case the murder of a dissident Russian poet, passing through Edinburgh on a speaking tour. There's much more to it than that, of course, and soon enough Rebus smells a wholesale cover-up involving a group of Russian businessmen being courted by the city's power elite. Also in the mix is Rebus' longtime nemesis (and ironic alter ego), crime boss Big Ger Caverty, who faces his own kind of twilight. Rankin hits every note on the nose here, from the mixed emotions of Rebus' longtime partner Siobhan Clarke, eager for promotion yet reluctant to see her mentor edging toward mortality, to Rebus' bullheaded insistence on going out the way he came in, mistrusting teamwork in all its guises, or, as Siobhan describes his career, decades of bets hedged, lines crossed, and rules broken. The joy of a Rebus novel has always been reveling in those broken rules and crossed lines. What is the appeal of character-driven crime fiction, you ask? Watching Rebus do his job and stick it to every company man (or woman) who gets in his way.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books-Rezension
A journalist, a hacker and a 40-year-old cold case. A FEW years ago, Ake Daun, a professor of European ethnology, posted an article on Sweden's official national Web site, Sweden.se, arguing that Swedes are not in fact gloomy or suicide prone. "Sweden is quite far down in the European suicide table, in 15th place," Daun wrote, blaming a 1960 speech by Dwight Eisenhower for leaving outsiders with the impression that Swedes tended toward "sin, nudity, drunkenness and suicide." Maybe so. But "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish journalist who died of a heart attack in 2004, won't help the country's image any. The novel offers a thoroughly ugly view of human nature, especially when it comes to the way Swedish men treat Swedish women. In Larsson's world, sadism, murder and suicide are commonplace - as is lots of casual sex. (Sweden isn't all bad.) "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," published in Sweden in 2005, became an international best seller. The book opens with an intriguing mystery. Henrik Vanger, an octogenarian industrialist, hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just lost a libel case under murky circumstances, to investigate the disappearance of his great-niece, Harriet. Nearly 40 years earlier, Harriet vanished from a small island mostly owned by the Vanger family, and Henrik has never gotten over it. Blomkvist takes on the case, despite serious misgivings, after Henrik promises him 2.4 million kroner (about $372,000 at the current exchange rate) for a year's work. Henrik says he's certain that someone in his family murdered Harriet. "I detest most of the members of my family," he tells Blomkvist. "They are for the most part thieves, misers, bullies and incompetents" - a description that will prove to be, if anything, too kind. The girl of the title isn't Harriet but Lisbeth Salander, a 24-yearold computer hacker with a photographic memory, a violent temper and some serious intimacy issues. After a nasty plot detour involving a lawyer foolish enough to try to take advantage of her, Salander teams with Blomkvist to solve the mystery of Harriet's disappearance. The novel perks up as their investigation gains speed, though readers will need some time to sort through the various cousins and nephews and half-brothers and -sisters who populate the Vanger family. Harriet's case turns out to be connected to a series of murders in the 1950s and '60s. When a cat is killed and its tortured corpse is left outside the cottage where Blomkvist is living, he and Salander realize they may not be working on a cold case after all. BUT if the middle section of "Girl" is a treat, the rest of the novel doesn't quite measure up. The book's original Swedish title was "Men Who Hate Women," a label that just about captures the subtlety of the novel's sexual politics. Except for Blomkvist, nearly every man in the book under age 70 is a violent misogynist. Nor will "Girl" win any awards for characterization. While Blomkvist comes to life as he's investigating the murder, his relationships with his daughter and with Erika Berger, a co-worker who is his occasional lover, seem halfformed and weak. Even after 460 pages, it's not clear whether Blomkvist cares, whether he's troubled by his lack of intimacy or simply resigned to it. Is he stoic or merely Swedish? Either way, he seems more a stock character than a real person. But the real disappointment in "Girl" comes in its final section, after the mystery of Harriet's disappearance has been solved. Without any warning, "Girl" metamorphoses into a boring account of Blomkvist's effort to take down the executive who originally won the libel lawsuit mentioned at the start of the novel. The story of his revenge is boring and implausible, relying heavily on lazy e-mail exchanges between characters. And so "Girl" ends blandly. Only Ake Daun and the Swedish tourist board can be happy about that. Alex Berenson is a reporter for The Times. His most recent novel is "The Ghost War."
Library Journal-Rezension
All good things must come to an end, and Rankin's Inspector Rebus series does so in the aptly titled Exit Music. Rankin began planning this swan song when one of his police consultants pointed out that in 2007 Rebus would be set to retire at the mandatory age of 60. For fans of John Rebus, it's a tough book, because every page turned means getting closer to having to say goodbye to an old friend. The story itself is a complicated yarn involving a poet, a diplomat, an audio engineer, financiers, and politicians. But the plot definitely takes a back seat to the character studies--of Rebus, Siobhan Clarke, and many other notable names from the series. The case and the book are both a fitting end to the storied career of one of Edinburgh's finest; plots and characters are tied up nicely, but not with too neat a bow. Strongly recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/08.]--Amy Watts, Univ. of Georgia Lib., Athens (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.