Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin

When you keep mishearing the words of a song, what do you do? Make it the title of your book. Our Inspector Rebus mishears the words of the song Standing in Another Man's Rain as Standing in Another Man's Grave and we have our nice not so little tittle. Inspector Rebus is now retired Inspector Rebus and is working in the cold cases unit.

A woman approaches Rebus asking him to look into the disappearance of her daughter more than a decade ago pointing out similar missing girls along the A9 route over the last 12 years. She postulates the theory of A9 serial killer, and linking the latest disappearance of a girl to these cases. Rebus starts looking into these cases and finds that he is no longer looking into cold cases but is actively involved in a live case. What happened to these girls? Is there really a serial killer at work? Or is this theory the overactive imagination of a distraught mother?

With the latest development in technologies where with social networking public gets actively involved in finding the missing girl, has Rebus become redundant? Rebus travels the A9 route up and down, down and up, all the time keeps apologising to his car for overworking it. But he is not one to stop, is he? Whatever be the latest technological developments, there is the need for somebody to do the old-fashioned boring legwork and our Rebus is an expert in it. Will all this hard work produce results? Will he able to find clues to cases long closed? Will he be able to link these cases? Are these cases even related? Will he find the missing girl or at least what happened to her?

I liked the way Rankin justifies the title how somebody could be standing in another man's grave. There are twists and turns but they are more or less expected. I liked the trick Rebus plays in the end. Overall, an interesting police procedural. I am glad Rebus is back, hope he makes it to current cases instead of cold cases.

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