The Impossible Dead

It s a thoroughly predictable line, but a wholly accurate one Malcolm Fox is not John Rebus This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the fact is that Fox remains, after two books, a not overly compelling character In this book his status as an investigator of internal police corruption is repeatedly called into question by any attentive reader due to the simple fact that he frequently ignores orders and acts well outside the bounds of his pay scale.Thing is he doesn t even break the rules in the [...]

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I am a dedicated Ian Rankin fan In the past some may have called me a groupie.Anyway Rankin is a master of the craft of crime fiction writing He understands how to create detectives and criminals He knows how to make settings come alive and become characters in his novels.Fox, Rankin s new protagonist, is divorced, in his 40s, and he s quieter than Rebus He doesn t drink alcohol he enjoys Appletiser He s objective, and he s a gentleman He works for The Complaints aka The Internal Affairs departm [...]

Two things for audiobook creators 1 Don t put loud music as a lead in to the book It isn t necessary, adds nothing, and hurts my ears 2 It isn t necessary to have readers speak with an accent that the people in the book supposedly use Though I didn t like this book as well as the first book with Malcolm Fox, I don t think the above complaints No pun intended have any bearing on my assessment I see that I made one of the above complaints on the other Fox book At least I am consistent I did finish [...]

The Impossible Dead is a solid, beefy mystery with Scottish atmosphere and slow burn tension in ample supply Ian Rankin makes writing these stories together look so easy He s such a genuine, non flashy storyteller The effect is like some kind of trick You are up and running alongside Matthew Fox and have as much desire as he does to figure out what the hell is going on Rankin trusts his readers, holds nothing back And you care about the very sticky situation Matthew Fox finds himself in a cop in [...]

Ian Rankin to me will always be synonymous with John Rebus but Rebus, although still fighting crime, is in retirement and so its good to meet a new hero in town DI Malcolm Fox He s working in the complaints dept internal affairs to you and me and together with two comrades has been sent to the kingdom of Fife to investigate the strange case of Detective Paul Carter Carter who has been found guilty of misconduct and it is feared that fellow officers have been complicit in a cover up The Complaint [...]

When Ian Rankin retired his Inspector Rebus character, and published his first, Malcolm Fox of The Complaints novel, I wasn t sure that Fox would be a worthy successor The first novel, The Complaints, introduces us to Malcolm Fox a detective whose unenviable job is to investigate wrongdoing by his fellow police officers Think of all of those police shows you ve seen on television and internal affairs Fox and his team are sent to investigate laxity in a police department after one of their office [...]

This second in a series about the Complaints department of Scottish law enforcement is big In the process of investigating a relatively straightforward sexual harassment claim against a sergeant and his colleagues, the person who brought the suit in the first place ends up dead Investigating this new mystery uncovers the scent of corruption and death that extends back decades I listened to the audiobook narrated by the estimable Peter Forbes, who makes the Scottish accent understandable but also [...]

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Handwritten on inside Rebecca Strong Xmas 2011Dedication I MDavid ThompsonOpening He s not here, the desk sergeant said So where is he Out on a call Fox stared hard at the man, knowing it wouldn t do any good The sergeant was one of those old timers who reckoned they d seen it all anf faced most of it down Fox glanced at the next name on his list.I need to get this under my belt before embarking on Standing In Another Man s Grave where Rebus and Fox meet up swoon Cracking storyline, solid writin [...]

this book in the beginning it s a little boring it s like there s no action and everything it s a mess but, as we continue reading, the books becomes and and interesting and everythings starts to make sense i recommend you this book, if you are into thriller books, i think you will enjoy this one keep in mind that the beginning is a little messy, but believe me that in the end it will surprise you.

Ok, so this is partially on me I was so desperate for an audiobook I manage to grab a second in the series, something that I d normally avoid And it sort of read or was heard as such for the longest time it was like entering the play on a second act But then it evened out and became a of less stand alone story about an investigator with Scottish equivalent of internal affairs department It starts off as a fairly mundane questioning of the colleagues of a fellow police officer who is being accus [...]

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THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD 2011 Ian Rankin This is the second novel in Rankin s new series featuring the policemen who represented the Complaints group within Scotland s legal system They roughly correspond to our American Internal Affairs Department with their mandate to investigate infractions within the police department itself The usual crew is here Malcolm Fox, the leader, Tony Kaye, and Joe Navsmith The group works well together, and the interplay is often the pivotal part of the story They are [...]

I came to the Rankin novels somewhat late, my mother has read everything that Ian Rankin has written if her favourite author wrote a new version of the telephone directory she would buy the hardback version and want it signed But when I was off work for a while, she gave me the first Rebus novels and after the first few pages I was hooked I liked The Complaints and I liked the fact that Inspector Malcolm Fox is the antithesis of John Rebus, he doesn t drink and he is one of the policemen that po [...]

I think this is probably the finest Ian Rankin story I have read Inspector Rebus was a set of memorable detective stories and well liked, but in this Malcolm Fox series, I think Rankin is at the height of his powers I really hope he writes books with Fox as the hero.Malcolm Fox and his team set out to tackle a mundane case of police corruption and cover up and stumble on to a long ago murder that everyone has forgotten Stung by his father thinking he is not a real cop, Fox sets out to unravel t [...]

In America we call them Internal Affairs, in Ian Rankin s The Impossible Dead they re called The Complaints cops that bust cops there s three of them, they joke a lot one s on the wagon, one s a bachelor, and one s married That s how you tell them apart Then there were a bunch of mumbling Scotsmen, some political stuff that was way old and out dated, a grumpy half senile dad, and an annoyingly bitchy sister, both of which belong to the non drinking cop Of course I m forgetting a few characters, [...]

Ingeniously complex and challenging Rebus has an worthy and admirable successorEd

One could say that it is sometimes a blessing to be a British crime fiction author, since the local publishers do not ask their writers to deliver a new book every six months, and thus the standards one has come to expect of them remain high as ever Ian Rankin is one of those lucky authors and so we are not surprised to receive yet another great novel from him In this his main protagonist is inspector Malcolm Fox whom we ve first met in his previous novel, The Complaints, who s now called to inv [...]

Foi a minha estreia com este autor O in cio algo lento e confuso deixou me um pouco de p atr s na primeira metade do livro E ainda bem que n o sou pessoa de desistir de uma leitura, mesmo que se venha a revelar um verdadeiro embuste Este n o foi o caso Julgo, at , que a forma como Ian Rankin iniciou a obra, depois de esta estar lida, faz todo o sentido, tendo em conta que Uma Morte Imposs vel se trata de um romance subtil e intrigante.Mesmo ainda n o tendo lido o primeiro volume desta s rie, n o [...]

I read the first book of Ian Rankin s new series about Inspector Fox of The Complaints the Scottish police version of Internal Affairs all in a fever I was amazed by its twists and turns and the deft way Rankin handled each scene and character I couldn t wait to read the second one in the series, this book It was pretty good, but the ending was a bit of a letdown compared to the first one.Fox is still dealing with his troubled sister and his aging father Meanwhile at work he and his colleagues J [...]

The complexity of Ian Rankin s The Impossible Dead is astounding for all the right reasons.What begins as a seemingly simple affair Malcom Fox and his Internal Affairs colleagues, dubbed the Complaints, investigate allegations made about Detective Paul Carter quickly descends into the past and, oninously for Fox, a terrorist group that was part of the Scottish Nationalist movement back in the 80s Rankin ties the various threads together perfectly he s a veteran of the contemporary crime novel no [...]

I ve enjoyed Rankin s Rebus character in a number of novels, and this is my first with Malcolm Fox, head of the Complaints similar to IAD in the starring role It s a promising series, but definitely not the same as Rebus.As with many good mysteries, The Impossible Dead starts out in one direction, a fairly easy role for the Complaints team to investigate a nearby department s improper handling of a citizen accusation against one of their own, and branches off into something considerably complex [...]

I ve always liked the way Ian Rankin fills out the characters in his books, so you get to know the people pretty well Over lots of books this really fleshed out Rebus, his friends and enemies in the police, his romantic entanglements and even the criminal world he confronted He s doing the same thing with Malcolm Fox The problem for me is that Malcolm s a much duller character than Rebus, and his conflicts with the rest of the force lack the sparkle I ve come to expect This one starts very slowl [...]

I quite enjoyed the story of Detective Inspector Malcolm Fox and his Internal Affairs team, named The Complaints, comprising himself, Detective Joe Naismith and Detective Tony Kaye They had to investigate whether fellow policemen covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter, who was found guilty of misconduct But this supposedly simple job soon turned into a very complicated one, with conspiracy and cover ups well and truly in the forefront A brutal murder from long ago, 1985 in fac [...]

Ian Rankin is one of my favourite authors I have read and own all of his books to date I thoroughly enjoyed all of his books until this one I cannot put my finger on the problem It was a real disappointment and an effort to read I have breezed through all his other ones I just could not get into it To me there was no excitement, the plot just seemed to plod along and I could not care about any of the characters in particular At the end I really missed Rebus Fox does not come close as a character [...]

While I did manage to finish this book, it failed to grab me, and left me wondering what it was all about There didn t seem to be a central conflict that was worth caring about, and the mystery surrounding a cold case was not compelling and didn t tie into the contemporary case in a meaningful or significant way As other reviews mentioned, the main character Malcolm Fox is elusive and hard to identify with This doesn t make him all the mysterious and intriguing His is not a well drawn character [...]

oh dear, probably my least favourite Rankin book maybe the character didnt do anything for me I do like Rebus as a whole, though have read a Fox book before e story didnt go anywhere for me, no great surprises, no twists , no turns, and a tad too much time talking about Fox s dad.

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I am torn about what I actually think of the book The writing is good, no doubt, and Rankin gets me interested in the minor details of Fox s life, whether it is the takeaway dinner of haggis, which remains uneaten, or the minor tragedy of his breakfast, where he found that the remainder of the milk he d wanted to eat his All Bran with had turned into curd, or the fact that Fiona the ballistics expert she could be called Fiona the Ball Such a cool moniker makes horrible coffee, or that Evelyn Mil [...]