Interesting.
The plot took place in Edinburgh and as author is Scottish, there were lot of specific and difficult words to bit through, though it was fun to learn peculiarities of different expressions.
I liked that characters were complex and intertwined with each other, creating a good groundwork for next installments and sequels. Plot did not seem to be dragged, there was nice introduction between character introduction and development and actually story development.
While I did not catch any particular ambience, the book seemed fairly accurate and believable in the inner workings and life of detectivism, police, journalism, maniacs, social relations and problems. I like that there were a lots of loose ends left for future stories, which likely get some clarification, such as what was deal with Rebus’s father, who is Gill and who was the random woman who Rebus tried to strangulate, what’s the deal with his former wife. In fact, there are lot of ends from which the story could in the future lead us, we will see.