Rebus stories. Compared to novels, short stories offer fewer places to conceal the clues. Rankin uses humour to distract attention.
- Playback - A jilted lover tries to frame a murder on his replacement by playing around with recorded phone messages.
- The Dean Curse - A (retired?) Brigadeer's car is blown up while he got out to buy a bottle. It turns out that his daughter was going out with an unsuitable man - a car stealer - so the brigadeer (secret service? Ex Northern Ireland?) had faked an attempt on his own life, having employed the car stealer. The brigadeer's bodyguard says that Rebus had no evidence and that he'd deal with it - there was a history of mental problems. The brigadeer disappears.
- Being Frank - Frank, a tramp, is one of the Rebus's informers. He's a conspiracy theorist, but this time (plus or minus mishearings) he alerts the detective to a con-man who tries to trick Rebus.
- Concrete Evidence - A body discovered under a floor laid decades before might be the ex-partner of the now-rich builder who put the floor down. Rebus works out how the story of the builder's disappearance (a boat accident, body never found) could have been fabricated. Enough documentary evidence is found to make a successful case, a rival builder helping.
- Seeing Things - Schoolgirls had seen a bloody man by a tree who suddenly disappeared, leaving a stain that wouldn't go away. A miracle? Cults assemble. There's 24 hour protection of the tree. A dead body is later found.
- A Good Hanging - A fringe actor is found hung on gallows that were a stage prop. He'd been engaged to Mari, a member of the cast. He'd died in a fight with a rival who had tried to make it look like suicide, but the temptation to add literary allusion to the deception gave the murderer away
- Tit for Tat - We learn about tenament life. There's been an arson attack on a man s in, justing passing by. Rebus had killed a criminal by accident on Friday. Rebus is ok, though he wonders whether he could have avoided the death.
- Auld Land Syne - rebus is in Edinburgh city centre on New Year's Eve because there's a tip that there'll be a drug deal. He meets a criminal there who's been let out of prison early - he'd had a religious conversion. Later that night the ex-con kills the drug-dealer - the dealer who'd supplied the ex-con's son with the drugs he overdosed with.
- The Gentleman's Club - A schoolgirl suicides in her bath. Rebus deduces that her best friend was having an affair with her father and that the girl had ultimatumed her father to confess and desist.
- Monstrous Trumpet - While Rebus is hosting a French detective, he investigates the stealing of an item from the opening of a radical feminist art exhibition. The stolen statue is a combination of pieces from various models, including partners of woman who were at the opening.
A mouth "visibly" dropped open at one point, but otherwise I though the writing and stories good enough.
