Twelve remarkable, gritty stories starring Detective Inspector John Rebus in his home city of Edinburgh, as only Ian Rankin can portray it: not just the tearooms and cobbled streets of the tourist brochures, but a modern urban metropolis with a full range of criminals and their victims--blackmailers, peeping Toms, and more than one kind of murderer.It's a city like any other, a city that gives birth to crimes of passion, accidents, and long-hidden jealousy, and a city in which criminal minds find it all too easy to fade into the shadows.

"Twelve terrific stories starring Detective Inspector John Rebus..."--Back cover.

Playback --The Dean curse -- Being Frank -- Concrete evidence -- Seeing things -- A good hanging -- Tit for tat -- Not Provan -- Sunday -- Auld Lang Syne -- The Gentlemen's Club -- Monstrous trumpet.