Malcolm Fox

Dirty cops, moral dilemmas, and personal turmoil set the stage for this brilliant crime novel about what happens when a murder takes place too close to home. Nobody likes “The Complaints”, they're the cops who investigate other cops. It's a department known within the force as The Dark Side, and it's where Malcolm Fox works. He's a serious man with a father in a nursing home and a sister who persists in an abusive relationship, frustrating problems about which he cannot seem to do anything. Then the reluctant Fox is given a new case. There's a cop named Jamie Breck, and he's dirty. The problem is, no one can prove it. As Fox takes on the job, he learns that there's more to Breck than anyone thinks, dangerous knowledge, especially when a vicious murder takes place far too close to home. In “The Complaints”, Rankin proves again why he is one of the world's most beloved and bestselling crime writers, mixing unstoppable pacing with the deeper question of who decides right from wrong.

The Complaints: that's the name given to the Internal Affairs department who seek out dirty and compromised cops, the ones who've made deals with the devil. And sometimes The Complaints must travel. A major inquiry into a neighboring police force sees Malcolm Fox and his colleagues cast adrift, unsure of territory, protocol, or who they can trust. An entire stationhouse looks to have been compromised, but as Fox digs deeper he finds the trail leads him back in time to the suicide of a prominent politician and activist. There are secrets buried in the past, and reputations on the line. In his newest pulse-pounding thriller, Ian Rankin holds up a mirror to an age of fear and paranoia and shows us something of our own lives reflected there.