COCKLE-PICKING IS NOT one of Edinburgh's more promising industries. Ian Rankin is honest enough to admit that.
When DI Rebus goes out to Leith in search of a slave-labour gang, he passes a sign on the beach warning that shellfish caught there will be unfit for human consumption. But given the care and passion with which Fleshmarket Close tries to bring home the issue of immigration, there's no reason to begrudge Rankin his echo of Morecambe Bay.
For this book, Rebus and the ever more prominent DS Siobhan Clarke are perched at a station on the edge of the New Town after their old base in St Leonard's was broken up.
They are both pursuing cases out of territory: Rebus, the murder of a dark-skinned man on a sink estate tense after the arrival of asylum-seekers; Clarke, the disappearance of a girl whose older sister committed suicide after rape. The stories link but not as thoroughly or as neatly as you might expect. And either would be strong enough for a novel of its own.
Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin is published by Orion priced £17.99.
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