Bleeding Hearts

City of Midnight Whispers

When a devoted schoolteacher vanishes without a trace, Detective Inspector John Rebus is summoned from the murky backstreets of Edinburgh to investigate a case that pulsates with silent dread. In Bleeding Hearts, Ian Rankin transports readers into a city that wears its history like a tarnished badge—every alleyway humming with secrets, every stone façade echoing whispered confessions. Rebus prowls through dimly lit courtrooms and smoke-filled jazz clubs, chasing fragments of a life torn apart by fear and obsession. As he pieces together the teacher’s final movements—her late-night lectures on Greek mythology, her private turmoil over a hidden affair—the line between victim and perpetrator blurs beneath the city’s neon haze.

Echoes of Betrayal

Haunted by memories of past failures and the ghosts of former colleagues, Rebus confronts a web of betrayal that stretches from the corridors of power to Edinburgh’s most exclusive salon. A wounded diplomat, a grieving father, and a calculating socialite each guard their own truths, while the city’s elite conspire to keep private scandals buried beneath polite society. Rankin’s razor-sharp prose exposes the corrosive underbelly of privilege as Rebus uncovers coded letters, clandestine meetings, and the faint scent of gunpowder on a borrowed car seat. Every revelation drives him closer to the edge—where the rules of law yield to the brutal logic of vengeance.

The Price of Justice

As tension crescendos in a deserted car park under a brittle moon, Rebus faces the ultimate moral reckoning: to protect the innocent, he may have to cross the very line he has sworn never to breach. With a hostage’s trembling plea echoing in his ears and a single gunshot promising deliverance or doom, he must decide whether justice demands sacrifice—or if redemption lies in mercy. The final pages collide in an explosive denouement that leaves both detective and reader questioning the true cost of truth and the fragile boundary between right and wrong.

. Ian Rankin – celebrated Scottish crime novelist born in 1960, renowned for his gritty Edinburgh-based mysteries and the long-running Inspector Rebus series, whose nuanced characters and unflinching realism have redefined modern noir fiction.