If you love crime fiction, then you probably already know Ian Rankin. This talented Scottish author has taken the genre by storm with his Inspector Rebus novels.

Rankin debuted Malcom Fox and his Internal Affairs team in The Complaints, and this October Fox returns in Rankin's new novel, The Impossible Dead. Fox and his team are headed to Fife, where a simple investigation spirals into a complex murder mystery and cover-up.

From the publisher: "The spiralling investigation takes Fox back in time to 1985, a year of turmoil in British political life. Terrorists intent on a split between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were becoming more brazen and ruthless, sending letter-bombs and poisonous spores to government offices, plotting kidnaps and murder, and trying to stay one step ahead of the spies sent to flush them out. Fox has a duty to get at the truth, while the body count rises, the clock starts ticking, and he fights for his professional and personal life."

Rankin talks about the novel in this video interview:

Read on for an Indigo exclusive preview... 

THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD

Chapter 1

‘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 and faced most of it down.  Fox glanced at the next name on his list.

‘Haldane?’

‘Sick leave.’

‘Michaelson?’

‘Out on the call with DI Scholes.’

Tony Kaye was standing just behind Fox’s left shoulder.  An instant before the words were out of his mouth, Fox knew what his colleague was going to say.

‘This is taking the piss.’

Fox turned to give Kaye a look.  News would now travel through the station: job done.  The Complaints had come to town, found no one home, and had let their annoyance show.  The desk sergeant shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying not to seem too satisfied at this turn of events.

Fox took a moment to study his surroundings.  The notices pinned to the walls were the usual stuff.  It was a modern police station, meaning it could just as easily have been the reception area of a doctors’ surgery or DSS office, as long as you disregarded the sign warning that the Alert Status had been lifted from LOW to MODERATE.  Nothing to do with Fox and his men: there’d been reports of a blast in woodland outside Lockerbie.  Kids, probably, and a good long way from Kirkcaldy.  Nevertheless, every police station in the country would have been notified.

The button on the counter had a hand-written sign next to it saying Press For Attention  –  which was what Fox had done three or four minutes ago.  There was a two-way mirror behind the counter, and the desk sergeant had almost certainly been watching the three arrivals –  Inspector Malcolm Fox, Sergeant Tony Kaye and Constable Joe Naysmith.  The station had been told they were coming.  Interviews had been arranged with DI Scholes, and DSs Haldane and Michaelson.

‘Think this is the first time we’ve had this stunt pulled on us?’ Kaye was asking the desk sergeant.  ‘Maybe we’ll start the interviews with you instead.’

Fox flipped to the second sheet of paper in his folder.  ‘How about your boss – Superintendent Pitkethly?’

‘She’s not in yet.’

Kaye made show of checking his watch.

‘Meeting at HQ,’ the desk sergeant explained.  Joe Naysmith, standing to Fox’s right, seemed more interested in the leaflets on the counter.  Fox liked that: it spoke of easy confidence, the confidence that these officers would be interviewed, that delaying tactics were nothing new to the Complaints.

The Complaints: the term was already outdated, even though Fox and his team couldn’t help using it, at least among themselves.  Complaints and Conduct had been their official title until recently.  Now they were supposed to be Professional Ethics and Standards.  Next year they’d be something else again: the name Standards and Values had been mooted, to nobody’s liking.  They were The Complaints, the cops who investigated other cops.  Which was why those other cops were never happy to see them.

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Thanks to our friends at Hachette Book Group Canada for facilitating this teaser.

Excerpted from The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin.

Excerpted by permission of Hachette Book Group Canada.

All rights reserved.

No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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