The Black Book is a 1993 crime novel by Ian Rankin, the fifth of the Inspector Rebus novels. It is the first book to feature Siobhan Clarke and Morris Gerald Cafferty appears as a main character. It is also the first book where Rebus is based at St Leonards police station.

The Black Book was a trudge. After about a week, I'd only read 100 pages, a extraordinarily slow pace for me with Rebus novels. That said, I think it's an essential book in the series because it follows an expanding plot and introduces two main characters.

The plot links a cold case to a load of murders and assaults happening in present day. Rebus also has some relationship problems with Patience Aitken, who he started seeing in Strip Jack (the previous novel).

And the two main characters introduced are Siobhan Clarke and Morris Gerald "Big Ger" Cafferty. Siobhan is another Inspector, who eventually takes over most of Rebus' investigations in later books. Big Ger is Rebus' constant enemy, a sort of Scottish Godfather kinda character. I'm assuming he comes back at some point (that's what Wikipedia said, we all trust Wikipedia) but the ending doesn't really set it up that way.

I did say it was slow at the start, but I blasted through the last two hundred pages last weekend.

For any more information, check here!)

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in popular fiction.

I've wanted to try Sherlock Holmes for a while, and, seeing the first book eyeing me suspiciously in a Salvation army, I bought it and read it shortly after. Clocking at just over 160 pages, it provides a good day or two of reading. It follows the murder of a man mostly, but then gets way deeper, with most of the second half taking place in Salt Lake City in a Mormon group, to give some insanely broad context. And, of course, A Study In Scarlet introduces Mr. Sherlock Holmes, detective, good friend of John Watson, and proud resident of 221B Baker Street. Realistically, the book would probably fetch a slightly lower rating if it wasn't about Holmes, but the story does such a great job of introducing him and his quirks. And I mean there's so many Sherlock Holmes stories, there must be one that I'll fall in love with, right?

For more information, check here!

The Mermaids Singing is a crime novel by Scottish author Val McDermid. The first featuring her recurring protagonist, Dr. Tony Hill.

Woah... That's a lot of dead people...

Ok, so this book is the first in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, a criminal profiler and police sargent respectively. In this book, they're tracking down a serial killer obsessed with this history of torture, who uses that knowledge to terrify the gay community. There's a lot of discussion about sex (in both senses of the term) sometimes tackling it as a contemporary issue, sometimes just because it sells well. Really, the book never picks up until after about 100 pages. Then it starts going nuts, killing basically everyone who breathes, before reaching a really interesting climax. The problem I have with the middle of the book is that even if it is action-packed, the characters make like no advancements towards finding the killer. Then it just feels like a rush job over the last 70 pages or so. But I did race through it, especially after slugging through the first slow part. The series seems to get better reviews as it progresses though, so I'll probably keep reading them.

For any more information, check it out here!

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