The Complaints - Tapa dura

Rising gloriously from Rebus's ashes is Malcolm Fox in the police complaints and conduct department. Dealing with the crime seething in Edinburgh's underbelly is tough ... Pure grit from the start. (OBSERVER)

Rebus is retired but here comes DI Malcolm Fox, Ian Rankin's great new protagonist ... James Macpherson is in fine form reading. (DAILY EXPRESS - Kati Nicholl)

Unmissable Rankin, as gripping and involving as any Rebus story. (CHOICE)

This is such a brilliant book it deserves a wider audience. No Rebus any more, alas, but Insp Malcolm Fox ... is every bit his equal as a character. As for the plot, I cannot heap it with greater praise than to say that it is as complicated and satisfying as Trollop's Dr Thorne. (THE GUARDIAN - Sue Arnold)

Another pacey tale comes from the splendid Ian Rankin ... Fox may be tee-toral and childless but he's Rebus' spiritual heir, bending the rules, getting suspended but stil busily hunting down villains and flirting, rather hopelessly. (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY)

Like all good crime novels, it takes you to places that you did not know existed - and, even if you did, would not wish to visit. Fox, brave and kind beneath his world-weary exterior, makes for an excellent guide. Rankin's legion of fans will have no grounds for complaints (EVENING STANDARD - Mark Sanderson)

Rankin delivers, without the help of Rebus, an excellent cop novel full of action, good dialogue, well-crafted characters and an authentic backdrop (THE TIMES - Marcel Berlins)

Rankin's touch for literary elements outwith genre expectations continues to be excellent. Even a brief paragraph about Fox's childhood contains as much nostagic fizz as a bubble of Irn Bru caught in a spluttering kid's nostril (SUNDAY HERALD GLASGOW - Alan Morrison)

The Complaints conclusively demonstrates that its author has still got it, and can put together an ample, satisfyingly complex detective novel without a Rolling Stones-loving, ex-SAS sleuth at its centre (SUNDAY TIMES - John Dugdale)

On the evidence of The Complaints it looks as if Fox will be just as sure-footed a guide to the city as his grizzled predecessor (DAILY EXPRESS - Barry Forshaw)