The Heights
The First Standalone Thriller In Two Decades From The Number One Bestseller - OUT NOW
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4.5 • 28 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'Ian Rankin is an all-time, solid-gold UK crime fiction great - read The Heights and find out why'
LEE CHILD
*****
MURDER COMES TO LONDON'S MOST LUXURIOUS HIGH-RISE: AND EVERY RESIDENT IS A SUSPECT.
The Heights: a gleaming, high-end high-rise looming over Hyde Park. Newly built from steel and smoked glass, a billionaire's playground offering sumptuous suites for the global elite.
But when a night concierge is found murdered in the lobby, the building's rarefied atmosphere is shattered, and the gilded lives within come under intense police scrutiny.
In a world designed to keep prying eyes out, where the residents are not used to being held to account, born-and-bred Londoner Detective Gillian Gish must find a way past their power, wealth and unimaginable influence.
The rules may be different at the top - but is anyone truly above the law? Or could it be that the higher you rise, the further you fall...?
THE FIRST STANDALONE THRILLER IN TWO DECADES FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER IAN RANKIN
A brand-new full-length novel, expanded from the previously published short story The Rise.
*****
PRAISE FOR THE HEIGHTS:
'Terrific'
MICK HERRON, bestselling author of Slow Horses & The Slough House series
'Elegantly constructed and stylishly executed ... A deft, richly layered and tautly woven thriller with echoes of Dickens and Christie which kept me guessing right to the end. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough'
CHRIS CHIBNALL, creator of Broadchurch and author of Death At The White Hart
'A brilliantly constructed mystery ... Taut, atmospheric and populated by wonderfully drawn characters, it's a page-turner that never sacrifices intelligence for pace. Simply superb. The king is still very much at the very top of his game'
ABIR MUKHERJEE, bestselling author of Hunted
'A high concept whodunnit from one of the legends of crime fiction'
STEVE CAVANAGH, bestselling author of the Eddie Flynn thrillers
*****
PRAISE FOR THE ICONIC NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER IAN RANKIN:
'Ian Rankin is a genius'
LEE CHILD
'Great fiction, full stop'
THE TIMES
'Whatever he writes, it will be worth reading ... Rankin has redefined the genre'
GUARDIAN
'Rankin is a phenomenon'
SPECTATOR
'Worthy of Agatha Christie at her best'
SCOTSMAN
'The king of crime fiction'
SUNDAY EXPRESS
'The arrival of a Rankin novel remains one of life's pleasures'
EXPRESS
*****
Customer Reviews
A great crime writer going through the motions
3.5 stars
The author is an award-winning and best-selling Scottish crime novelist, who was knighted in 2002 for his services to literature and his philanthropy. His Inspector Rebus character is as synonymous with Edinburgh as Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch is with Los Angeles. This, his 25th published novel, is his first standalone title in 20 years.
A number of books about nefarious goings-on in upmarket high-rise residential towers have appeared in recent times, including London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe and The Pinnacle by Abir Mukherjee, both published earlier this year. The latter was also written by a Scottish author, albeit of Indian extraction, but is set in Mumbai. Mr, sorry, Sir Ian Rankin placed the titular building in The Heights closer to home in London.
The book opens with an after-hours break-in, during which the CCTV is disabled and the doorman gets dead. A The residents are an assortment of HNW (high net worth) and UHNW (ultra-high net worth) individuals of various stripes, some of them out and out villains, and the rest dodgy to some degree, which makes for numerous suspects that the youngish female detective sergeant and her older male colleague weeks shy of retirement must sort through. As in all detective stories, our gal has baggage (unlucky in love, chip on shoulder about working class background, care of mother with dementia), while some of her more senior colleagues have serious conflicts of interest. Rankin manages to draw — mash might be a better word — the possibly over-numerous sub-plots together by the end with comeuppance on all fronts.
The prose is professional and well-paced, albeit a tad flat compared to Rebus novels. The characters are drawn from central casting, but there are a lot of them so there’s no time to dwell on their lack of distinguishing features.
Bottom line
To quote Bugs Bunny, “This is it, you'll hit the heights, And oh what heights we'll hit.”