Edgar winner Rankin's excellent 23rd outing for John Rebus (after 2019's In a House of Lies) takes the retired police inspector from Edinburgh to a remote part of northern Scotland, where his daughter Samantha's partner, Keith Grant, the father of his school-age granddaughter, has vanished. In his search for Keith, Rebus visits a local commune and--of particular interest to Keith--the ruins of a camp built during WWII that held captured German soldiers. An entitled landowner he runs across complicates his quest. Back in Edinburgh, former colleague Siobhan Clarke investigates the murder of Salman bin Mahmoud, a wealthy 23-year-old Saudi. The high-profile case draws in such familiar characters as criminal Morris Gerald Cafferty and Malcolm Fox, the smarmy, ambitious detective introduced in 2009's The Complaints. As the two plots converge, the various credible, complex backstories coalesce into a highly satisfying and unified whole. This fresh entry boasts the kind of storytelling that made Rankin famous. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Oct.)

Like Louise Penny, Rankin consistently finds clever ways of involving his retired detective in new investigations. This time it's a late-night call from John Rebus' daughter, Samantha, that gets the former Edinburgh inspector's juices flowing. Samantha's husband has been missing for two days from their home in the north of Scotland, prompting Rebus to clamber into his aging auto and embark on the long drive up the coast to the coastal village of Tongue. What he finds there is a web of secrets and long-simmering resentments, involving both the residents of Tongue and Rebus' difficult relationship with his daughter. Samantha's husband, Keith, it turns out, had been researching the history of a WWII internment camp for German prisoners located near the village, in particular the murder of a prisoner from the camp. When Keith's body is eventually discovered, Samantha becomes the chief suspect, though Rebus works to connect this new murder to the decades-old crime. Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, Rebus' former partner, Siobhan Clarke, and fellow investigator Malcolm Fox are working a murder case of their own, one that may connect to the events in Tongue. Rankin hits on all cylinders here: he makes the most of the fascinating internment-camp story; he injects new life into the familiar mystery trope of an outside investigator roiling the surface calm of an insular community; and he continues to develop the rich interplay between Rebus and Clarke.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: As Tartan Noir grows in popularity, Rankin continues to lead the charge. His high-profile presence on social media will be particularly important in the pandemic era.