“Saints of the Shadow Bible” by Ian Rankin – There are no Saints, Only Sinners

After the ordeal he endured a while ago, inspector Rebus was allowed back on the force, albeit with a demotion. As he is making his way through a mundane car crash case, news reaches his ears that a case from thirty years ago is being opened once again.

What’s worse, Rebus and the men who operated under him at that time are the ones placed under suspicion, as it is believed that they have helped a murderer elude justice for their own, selfish reasons.

Malcolm Fox, an old cop working his last cases in internal affairs is the one assigned to the task of finding out what Rebus has to hide, and what side of the fence he is really standing on.

As Fox digs deeper and deeper, it becomes apparent that even the coldest of cases won’t stay buried forever, and what’s more, the events which took place thirty years ago may very well have a bearing on the present, as Scotland is preparing to hold a referendum on independence. In the end, it seems that even those who called themselves saints where still sinners; they just walked under a different label.

Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin is certainly a very interesting experiment in the detective genre (yes, I know it’s been done before, but certainly isn’t enough of it out there), placing the main protagonist under the microscope of other investigators.

Rankin truly manages to make us doubt Rebus, the inspector we have come to know and love over so many books, his motivations, and whether or not he is actually managed to get away scot-free for his crime.

Naturally, there are plenty of dilemmas and moral questions that come along with it, such as the purpose of the crime and whether or not Rebus truly deserves to be punished for what he did, and whether he actually did it in the first place, for that matter.

The lines between good and evil are blurred into a neutral shade of gray, with all those involved in the ordeal being sinners in their own ways.

From a technical perspective, Saints of the Shadow Bible is probably one of the more entertaining detective novels that I have had the pleasure of reading in the recent past. You can never be sure of what is coming around the next corner, and the author feeds us just enough clues to quench our thirst to do our own detective work.

Admittedly, it would take one a lot of experience reading mystery novels to try and figure out the ending to this one, but I believe it can definitely be done (although I, myself, failed). There are no passages which drag on for too long, nor are there any nonsense filler sections which try to pass as “character development”.

The brunt of the focus is placed on advancing the story, and actually, that is where most of the character development takes place as Rebus is forced to walk a path he had never experienced before.

All in all, Saints of the Shadow Bible is definitely a mystery novel I can recommend to aficionados of the genre, especially if you like it when such stories take deviations from the classic route.

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Ian Rankin Personal site Ian Rankin is a crime writer of Scottish origin who is best-known in literary circles for his series of novels following Inspector Rebus from one case to the next. He has received a multitude of awards since the late 80s, including honorary doctorates and many prizes for individual books given by different European organizations.