The Roots of Evil by Quintin Jardine is an Edinburgh based crime novel that inevitably brings to mind Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels. But Jardine’s hero, Bob Skinner, is a very different character, a retired Chief Constable who is still highly respected in the new integrated Scottish police force.
It’s new year’s morning and a former police officer with a slightly tainted past is found shot dead in his car alongside an active officer who was also one of Skinner’s officers who also had an affair with Skinner’s daughter. Add in a complex and barely credible relationship with Skinner’s ex-wife now married to the head of one of Edinburgh’s leading crime families who has disappeared as a gang war may be breaking out and you have a plot full of twists and turns.
Roots of Evil is an easy read and quite enjoyable but somehow the plot didn’t hang together and I was eft a little disappointed.
3.5/5