Ian Rankin is the author of over 30 books either in his own name or as Jack Harvey. Most of them belong to the series of novels with Inspector John Rebus as the central, dominant character. When Rankin decided to retire Rebus, he turned his hand to writing about characters on the periphery of Rebus’ Edinburgh police force. There have been stories around the adventures of a lawbreaker and around the methods of the Complaints, the division of the constabulary that deals with matters of integrity and professional standards. Rankin tackled these variations with his usual skill in plotting, evoking the atmosphere of the city and creating strong characters.

Whatever the reason behind the return of Rebus, fans of good crime writing in the sub-genre of the police procedural will be very glad indeed. While Rankin would never produce a poor book, he had the Rebus series in particular down to a fine art. Poor old Rebus retired as an Inspector but upon returning to the cold cases unit, had to accept the rank of Sergeant. Fans of the television program New Tricks (irreverently but affectionately known colloquially as ‘Three Old Farts and a Babe’) might be disappointed to find that as Saints of the Shadow Bible opens, the cold case unit is being disbanded and Rebus is left floating between offices, superiors and cases, a situation he exploits to his advantage.

There are nods in the direction of cold cases however. Rebus refuses to let go of a case which is mentioned only in a ‘Prologue’ and ‘Epilogue’. The use of such bookends usually seems superfluous and pretentious and mars many a crime novel. In the case of Saints of the Shadow Bible however, Rankin makes it seem appropriate. The main body of the novel also refers to historical incidents that occurred during Rebus’ time as a junior detective at the Summerhall station decades earlier.

Saints of the Shadow Bible was the name that the Summerhall squad took for themselves and the bible was used in an initiation rite of pledging team loyalty. The Saints got results but often used methods which would not be condoned today. That is why Malcolm Fox of the Complaints – and the central character in two post-Rebus novels – has an interest in them. Fox is also at a loose end as his position is being abolished and so he has to negotiate the difficult return to detective work alongside colleagues he had previously been charged with investigating. With Rebus and Fox sharing a novel, Rankin ran the risk of his story descending into farce. He might have gone over the top with his superheroes bounding about Edinburgh and sweeping all before them. He might have failed to make their relationship realistic. But he succeeds in creating a tension that evolves into mutual respect and allows the two to first co-exist on the same pages and then to co-operate. Fox is handicapped by an overweening determination to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. Rebus is handicapped by an instinctive antipathy to the Complaints man and by his own enormous ego.

The Rebus-Fox relationship succeeds despite its tenuous beginnings. Initially, it seems dubious that Rebus would be allowed to help investigate affairs that potentially involved him, but his senior officers decided that Rebus would work with the inquiry and not leak information to his former colleagues. As an insider he could gain the confidence of former colleagues and tell when they were misleading the inquiry. However, the advice here should be: do not try this at home. Only a novelist of Rankin’s skill can overcome such risky beginnings.

The ‘double jeopardy’ law has been annulled in Scotland so that an accused can be prosecuted after initially being acquitted. The Solicitor-General has taken a personal interest in the case of a man named Billy Saunders, whose trial for murdering his wife’s lover seemed to have been poorly conducted by Summerhall detectives. There is an implication that Saunders might have known something that gave him a hold over Rebus’ old colleagues. Of the ‘Saints’, Frazer Spence, like Rebus a lowly detective constable at the time, is deceased. Eamonn Paterson is comfortably retired and Dod Blantyre is wheelchair bound and has not long to live.

The waters are muddied still further because one of the old ‘Saints’ Stefan Gilmour, despite leaving the force with his reputation under a cloud, has gone on to become a very wealthy businessman and spokesman for the ‘no’ case on full Scottish independence from England. Coincidentally perhaps, Rebus and D.I. Siobhan Clarke, once Rebus’ junior and something of a protégé, are investigating a motor accident involving a young woman whose boyfriend is the son of Justice Minister McCuskey. Rebus suspects that McCuskey Junior might have been at the scene of the accident, even driving. McCuskey Senior is ‘poster boy for an independent Scotland’ but shortly after the accident is found dead at home with a head wound and there is evidence that the house has been broken into.

As with all good crime plots, there are plenty of possibilities that must be eliminated before the truth about the accident or the Summerhall events can be discovered. True to character, Rebus pushes his luck and intuition, irritating superior officers and sharing the jigsaw pieces only after he has seen where they fit. Fox proceeds as he always does, meticulously following paper trails and double checking the evidence of witnesses. Clarke manages to get Rebus and Fox to work side by side and on occasion to co-operate for mutual benefit.

Whether or not the minutiae of the working arrangement are strictly consistent with police practices in Edinburgh or anywhere else, Rankin introduces and treats successfully a number of issues relevant to professional integrity and the influence of working cultures. Two decades ago the Fitzgerald Inquiry into the administration of justice in Queensland examined the deleterious influence of cultural factors such as insularity, informality, unaccountability, narrow recruitment policies and ill defined loyalty.

Rankin does something similar for the police force of the Edinburgh of Rebus and Fox. During the years of Rebus’ career, Big Ger Cafferty dominated the Edinburgh underworld and some senior police officers believed that Rebus was Cafferty’s man. While they were proved wrong about that, Rebus gets a result in the Epilogue case only by calling in a favour owed him by an emerging criminal. Rankin is too good a writer to make absolute moral judgments about his characters. Indeed, among all Rankin’s great qualities as a story teller, possibly his strongest is his steadfast refusal to turn his fiction into a crusade. Where Rebus is ruthless and determined, Rankin is practical and flexible.

By perhaps his fourth Rebus novel, Rankin’s great skill as a writer was obvious. This latest Rebus-Fox super story could have become farcical, but Rankin shows how relaxed and natural his story telling skills are. Saints of the Shadow Bible is classic Rankin and sets a very high standard for crime writing in 2014.

A former academic, Tony Smith has written extensively on a wide range of subjects as diverse as folk music and foreign policy issues in the Australian Review of Public Affairs, the Journal of Australian Studies Review of Books, Overland, the Australian Quarterly, Eureka Street, Online Opinion and Unleashed.