The First Stone" is the first and only story to be featured throughout the series which is not based upon a full Rebus novel, rather a novella from a collection of short stories. "Knots and Crosses" is the only story which despite bearing the name of a Rankin book, does not share the plot.

Even so, I never felt this was a question of genetics as much as it was learned behavior. The nature vs. nurture question has always felt sort of beside the point. I mean, it's obvious to me that while some personality traits are clearly handed down from parent to child (case in point, I have my dad's social awkwardness and my mom's passive-aggressiveness – a winning combo!), much of the way we act day-to-day has everything to do with the way we were taught – explicitly or implicitly, by parents and other sources – to make our way in the world. I was taught by my parents to be civil and to err on the side of kindness, and those are two lessons that have served me well. As I grew older, I was able to extrapolate that into an understanding that I should appreciate diversity, keep an open mind, and, above all else, try to remember that not everyone sees the world the way I do. I don't think I won any kind of genetic lottery; I just know my parents and the way they tried to raise my brother and me.Clarke is much younger than Rebus. Her parents are English and politically active on the left. She has a college degree. She is a devoted follower of the Hibernian Football Club ("Hibs"). As a woman, she faces obstacles to acceptance in the police force, especially since, like Rebus, she enjoys the challenges of solving cases rather than administrative work or networking. Rebus investigates when an unidentified body is found in the grounds of a local Edinburgh hotel which is due to play host to the World Trade Summit. When another body is found in the grounds of Edinburgh castle, Special Branch intervene and warn Rebus off the case. Rebus is forced to juggle two complex cases when an old friend approaches him to trace her son, who has disappeared, and a former colleague is killed in a freak accident, which asks the question – did he kill himself or was he murdered?

This is my fifteenth John Rebus novel, and before starting this book I had a question in my mind. When an author as successful as Rankin has been with his tough and idiomatic Scottish thrillers, a problem sets in after several books: how to keep the formula fresh?Detective Chief Inspector James Macrae is the head of CID at Gayfield Square police station in Edinburgh when Rebus and Clarke are stationed there after the closure of St Leonard's, that is, in Fleshmarket Close, The Naming of the Dead, and Exit Music (2004-2007). He does not like or trust Rebus, not even giving him a desk in the CID room at first, and suspending him three days before retirement in Exit Music. He has a favored DI, Derek Starr, who does what he wants, but he also likes DS Clarke. Detective Inspector Bobby Hogan is a police officer based at Leith police station. He appears in most of the novels from The Hanging Garden (1998) to A Question of Blood (2003). He is an intelligent cop and he and Rebus enjoy working together. This is my first Ian Rankin mystery, and I have ended up enjoying it. I've been a fan of British crime fiction for a while, but admittedly women writers like Jacqueline Winspeare, Dorothy L Sayers and Louise Penny (OK, Canadian). I just happened to end up with a second hand copy of Dead Souls first, following a friend expert in the genre recommended Rankin - afterwards discovering that a few readers think this one doesn't meet his usual standards. I will have to try other earlier ones to compare for myself on that.