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The Complaints
''The Complaints'' is a novel by Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin. It was published in the United Kingdom on 3 September 2009. Plot outline Detective Inspector Malcolm Fox works in the Complaints and Conduct Department of Lothian and Borders Police, members of which are invariably treated with suspicion and hostility by regular police officers. Fox and his team are tasked with investigating Detective Sergeant Jamie Breck, suspected of being a member of a child pornography ring. However, Breck is in turn investigating the death of Vince Faulkner, who was in an abusive relationship with Fox's sister. This brings Fox into direct contact with Breck, and as he develops both a friendship and a working relationship with him he begins to doubt the validity of his assignment. Despite his personal connection to the case, and against protocol, Fox gets involved in the investigation into Faulkner's death. This brings him into conflict with Breck's superior officer, who harbours a dislike o ...
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Ian Rankin
Sir Ian James Rankin (born 28 April 1960) is a Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels. Early life Rankin was born in Cardenden, Fife. His father, James, owned a grocery shop, and his mother, Isobel, worked in a school canteen. He was educated at Beath High School, Cowdenbeath. His parents were horrified when he then chose to study literature at university, as they had expected him to study for a trade. Encouraged by his English teacher, he persisted and graduated in 1982 from the University of Edinburgh, where he also worked on a doctorate on Muriel Spark but did not complete it. He has taught at the university and retains an involvement with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lived in Tottenham, London, for four years and then rural France for six while he developed his career as a novelist. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he worked as a grape picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist, college secretary and punk music ...
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Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations. The causes of the Great Recession include a combination of vulnerabilities that developed in the financial system, along with a series of triggering events that began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2005–2012. When housing prices fell and homeowners began to abandon their mortgages, the value of mortgage-backed securities held by investment banks declined in 2007–2008, causing several to collapse or be bailed out in September 2008. This 2007–2008 phase was called the subprime mortgage crisis. ...
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Novels By Ian Rankin
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the historica ...
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2009 British Novels
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the Brahmi numerals, beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and Gupta started curving the bottom vertical line coming up with a -look-alike. The Nagari continued the bottom stroke to make a circle and enclose the 3-look-alike, in much the same way that the sign @ encircles a lowercase ''a''. As time went on, the enclosing circle became bigger and its line continued beyond the circle downwards, as the 3-look-alike became smaller. Soon, all that was left of the 3-look-alike was a squiggle. The Arabs simply connected that squiggle to the downward stroke at the middle and subsequent European change was purely cosmetic. While the shape of the glyph for the digit 9 has an Ascender (typography), ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures the character usually has a desc ...
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Let It Bleed
''Let It Bleed'' is the eighth British and tenth American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released 28 November 1969 on London Records in the United States and shortly thereafter by Decca Records in the United Kingdom. Released shortly after the band's 1969 American Tour, it is the follow-up to 1968's '' Beggars Banquet''. As with ''Beggars Banquet'', the album marks a return to the group's more blues-sound approach that was prominent in the pre-''Aftermath'' period of their career. Additional sounds on the album draw influence from gospel, country blues and country rock. The album was recorded during a period of turmoil in the band; Brian Jones, the band's founder and original leader, had become increasingly unreliable in the studio due to heavy drug use, and during most recording sessions was either absent, or so incapacitated that he was unable to contribute meaningfully. He was fired in the midst of recording sessions for this album, and replaced by ...
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List Of Inspector Rebus Characters
This is a list of characters from the ''Inspector Rebus'' series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Ian Rankin. They are all fictional characters that have appeared in more than one novel in the series. A number of the characters appeared in the television adaptations made for ITV. Police Detective Inspector John Rebus Detective Inspector John Rebus is the protagonist in the Inspector Rebus series. He was born in 1947 in Fife and left school at the age of fifteen to join the Army. After serving in Northern Ireland he applied to undergo selection for the SAS, but after a horrendous ordeal in training, left the army and joined the Lothian and Borders Police. He is initially introduced as a Detective Sergeant, and is promoted to Detective Inspector early in the series. Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke ("Shiv") is Rebus's trusted friend and partner. Her given name is represented in IPA /ʃɨˈvɔːn/. In the television dramatisation ...
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A Question Of Blood
''A Question of Blood'' is a 2003 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the fourteenth of the Inspector Rebus novels. The book was a finalist for the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. Plot summary DI John Rebus, freshly treated for burned hands, faces trouble. A petty criminal who had been stalking Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance by an individual or group toward another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them. The ter ... DS Siobhan Clarke died in a fire on the night Rebus was injured. Rebus is known to have been at the stalker's house that night, but maintains that he left him unharmed and scalded his hands later at home. An ex-soldier appears to have killed two teenagers at a private school, injured one, and shot himself. The facts seem straightforward and the only mysteries are the motive and the origin of the gun. Rebus anta ...
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Edinburgh Trams
Edinburgh Trams is a tramway in Edinburgh, Scotland, operated by Edinburgh Trams Ltd. It is a line between St Andrew Square in the New Town and Edinburgh Airport, with 15 stops. Construction began in June 2008, and after encountering delays it opened on 31 May 2014. The scheme had an initial estimated cost of £375 million in 2003, but by May 2008, when contracts were signed, the cost had risen to £521 million. The final cost after delays was £776 million. After running for two years, the scheme had achieved pre-tax profitability (excluding maintenance and infrastructure costs) and exceeded the original ridership targets. It has run at an operating loss since 2018 (e.g. − £9.4 million in 2018). On 14 March 2019, Edinburgh Council voted to approve the extension of the existing line from York Place to Newhaven. The extended line is due to be operational by early 2023. History Background Edinburgh and Leith were originally served by horse-drawn coaches, and then ...
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Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. Edinburgh is Scotland's List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, second-most populous city, after Glasgow, and the List of cities in the United Kingdom, seventh-most populous city in the United Kingdom. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the Courts of Scotland, highest courts in Scotland. The city's Holyrood Palace, Palace of Holyroodhouse is the official residence of the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarchy in Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scots law, Scottish law, literature, philosophy, the sc ...
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Exit Music
''Exit Music'' is the seventeenth crime novel in the internationally bestselling Inspector Rebus series, written by Ian Rankin. It was published on 6 September 2007. The book is named after the Radiohead song " Exit Music (For a Film)". Plot summary The novel takes place on November 15-27, 2006; Rebus's last day in the Edinburgh CID is November 25. Rebus and Siobhan Clarke are investigating the death of a famous Russian exile poet who was mugged and beaten to death on King's Stables Road. Then a sound recordist with close ties to the dead Russian poet dies at home in an arson fire. Rebus discovers that the dead poet had eaten his last meal with the recordist, then had a drink with Morris Gerald Cafferty, Rebus's gangster nemesis, in a bar where Cafferty was meeting a Russian oligarch and a Labour official from the Scottish Parliament. Rebus finds Cafferty's hand in many schemes (drugs, abusive landlord practices), but the biggest ones involve real estate and are quite le ...
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Detective Fiction
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades. History Ancient Some scholars, such as R. H. Pfeiffer, have suggested that certain ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (the Protestant Bible locates this story within the apocrypha), the account told by two witnesses broke down when Daniel cross-examines th ...
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The Naming Of The Dead
''The Naming of the Dead'' is a crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the sixteenth of the Inspector Rebus novels. It is set in Edinburgh in July 2005, in the week of the 31st G8 summit, G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, Gleneagles. Plot summary An underlying thread throughout the book is that of familial relationships; the book opens with Detective Inspector John Rebus attending the funeral of his brother Michael, who has died suddenly from a stroke. The parents of Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke arrive in Edinburgh as part of the protests, demonstrations, and scuffles that surrounded the 31st G8 summit, G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, Gleneagles, keeping the police busy. Clarke defied her parents by becoming a police officer; she now wants to feel like a daughter. Rebus is nearing retirement ("nobody would blame you for coasting"), and becomes sidelined until the apparent suicide of MP Ben Webster occurs at a high-level meeting in Edinburgh Castle. It emerges that Webster ...
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