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Mortal Causes

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Mortal Causes

By: Ian Rankin
Narrated by: James Macpherson
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Summary

It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing... A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city's ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem - and it's just about to erupt.

©1995 Ian Rankin (P)2011 Orion Publishing Group Limited Crime Thrillers Fiction Mystery Police Procedural Thriller Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Crime Detective Suspense
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Mortal Causes starts with the gruesome discovery of a corpse in a long-buried street in Edinburgh during the Festival. It’s the beginning of an investigation that brings Rebus into close contact not only with the conventional underworld - including Rebus’s old
sparring partner, gangster Big Ger Cafferty - but also with the world of the Troubles. Bomb threats and bodies multiply, while Rebus’s love life is, as ever, complicated. Siobhan does appear, but we don’t see much of her. The dramatic opening of the novel sets the tone for the rest of the novel and its climactic scenes, set amid the bustle of the Festival (which Rebus loathes) … That sense of drama and immediacy is probably the book’s strongest attribute. The story hangs together well. The cast of characters is relatively long and can be a bit confusing. But the plot moves along at a good pace. Some of the accents are a bit dodgy, including a Cockney Special Branch copper and Cafferty, whose baritone, gravelly tones I always find a little OTT… Overall narrator Macpherson does a fine job. I’ve been listening to the Rebus titles in order over the last couple of years. The dialogue-heavy narrative works really well on Audible. Mortal Causes is perhaps the most rounded of the novels so far. The strands of the plot are drawn together expertly. Rebus is beginning to find his feet in Mortal Causes - it’s a relatively easy, satisfying and fast-paced listen. It also reinforces a theme that will remain predominant throughout the series - the duality of Edinburgh, a city with a dark side.

Rebus in mortal danger

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Yet another masterclass from Ian Rankin. I am an Edinburgh bus driver and spend my days driving through Rebus' territory. The books are so well written I feel part of the story.

Mortal Causes

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Great listen very well read and the story was engrossing didn’t want to stop my dog walk or drive to work.

Excellent

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This is the first of the Rebus stories that, initially, I struggled to get into. This was because it felt like too many storylines and characters.

However, as the audiobook went on, it began to come together, leading to an impressive ending.

James Macpherson once again is brilliant as the narrator. He has certainly, for me, become the voice of the Rebus audiobooks. I doubt anyone else would come anywhere near.

The one thing I really enjoyed was the numerous references to the joke about “an octopus going into a restaurant”. I couldn’t for the life of me remember how it went, and none of the references to it gave the complete joke. That was very clever of Rankin, as I just had to look up the actual joke.

A Complex Story But It Comes Together At The End

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Really enjoy the story and pace it set from the get go, as well as Rebus being used to do the leg work and take a good few hits along the way as part of an already bigger suspicion. I thought the character of Abernathy was greatly used at the start and in the end as well, i early on thought he was the leak with how he just left and went back to London but instead was drip feeding Rebus stuff throughout and using him immensely to get all the right information and track down the people of interest in the most John Reubs way possible !

A bit of role reversal

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