Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seed Central Hotel to ashes. Long-forgotten and unsolved, the case reappears when a charred body-- with a bullet in its head--is found amongst the ruins. Inspector John Rebus knows that his superiors would rather he let sleeping dogs lie. He knows that part of the answer lies somewhere in a cryptic black notebook. And he knows that to solve the case, he'll have to peel back layer upon layer of unspeakable secrets to arrive at the truth. . . The Sunday Telegraph raves, "No one captures the noirish side of the city as well as Rankin," and The Black Book is one of his best.