36. Set in Darkness - Ian Rankin

Hey! I finished this book last night and I am posting about it today! I think that is a personal best! Wow I am dorky.

Another mystery, this one just the way I like them. Lots of twists and turns keeping me guessing. I was a little annoyed because about half way through I thought I had it all figured out (!!) but no, those were just well placed red-herrings making me feel all full of myself. Sometimes my friends tell me that I am a TV producers dream because I react exactly the way they want their target audience to react and I think with this book I was the authors dream because I would think I had the case solved and then the detectives would come to my exact conclusions and then we would all be wrong and it was all very edge of my seat novel reading.

The main character was DI Rebus (the books are set in Scotland and I am not entirely sure what the DI stands for ... Dsomething Inspector obviously). There is actually a series of books about him and his cases and Set in Darkness isn't the first in the series but most mysteries work well as stand alone cases and this was no exception. I could tell that some of the characters had been fleshed out in earlier works and there was some backstory that was a little fuzzy and would probably have been clearer had you read the earlier books but those points didn't work to the detriment of this novel.

The events of Set in Darkness even took place during the Christmas season so that kind of fit too. Of course this was not exactly cheery Christmas fare. Bleak, life as a cop is often hard and depressing never more so than at Christmas might be a more apt description. But I am not exactly in a Rah Rah Christmas place at the moment so it didn't put a damper on my spirits or anything. And really I thought it was a well-woven storyline and not much makes me happier than that.