Mortal Causes

The sixth novel featuring Inspector John Rebus, available for the first time as an e-book and with an exclusive introduction by author Ian Rankin. Inspector John Rebus hates the Edinburgh Festival. He especially hates that last Saturday night. He has spent years on the police force confronting it, avoiding it, and cursing it, but most of the time he still gets caught up in it. Nevertheless, this is an honored tradition of Scotland, and a happy one at that. But amid the blaring noise created by the music, laughter, and toasts of "Slainte" as glasses of whiskey are swilled, another tradition—one older than music, happiness, and drink itself—has traveled to Edinburgh and nested itself in the medieval quarter of Mary King''s Close. There, beneath the streets of Edinburgh, Inspector Rebus finds the lifeless body of Billy Cunningham swinging from a butcher''s hook and knows that his problems have only begun. When Big Ger Cafferty, the ruthless