Damon Mee was last seen in a blurred security video on the dance floor of a Kirkaldy nightclub. It was a routine missing persons case and it wasn’t even on his patch, but inspector John Rebus said he’d look into it as a favour to the boy’s father, a friend from his school days.

The ripples of the investigation widen rapidly. They lead to the club’s greasy owner, to a slightly bent casino croupier, to a drop-dead blonde whose name nobody seems to know, to a Hibs striker with a talent for goals and a weakness for gambling and, finally, to the shadowy men who call the shots in Edinburgh’s underworld.

When it’s over, Rebus has repaid a long overdue debt and his boss has received an unexpected but very welcome birthday present.

IN A HOUSE OF LIES...

Everyone has something to hide

A missing private investigator is found, locked in a car hidden deep in the woods. Worse still — both for his family and the police — is that his body was in an area that had already been searched.

Everyone has secrets

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is part of a new inquiry, combing through the mistakes of the original case. There were always suspicions over how the investigation was handled and now — after a decade without answers — it’s time for the truth.

Nobody is innocent

Every officer involved must be questioned, and it seems everyone on the case has something to hide, and everything to lose. But there is one man who knows where the trail may lead — and that it could be the end of him: John Rebus.

‘He’s gone...’

When his daughter Samantha calls in the dead of night, John Rebus knows it’s not good news. Her husband has been missing for two days.

Rebus fears the worst — and knows from his lifetime in the police that his daughter will be the prime suspect.

He wasn’t the best father — the job always came first — but now his daughter needs him more than ever. But is he going as a father or a detective?

As he leaves at dawn to drive to the windswept coast — and a small town with big secrets — he wonders whether this might be the first time in his life where the truth is the one thing he doesn’t want to find...

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it’s not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last.

What drove a good man to cross the line? Or have times changed, and the rules with them?

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh’s most explosive case in years, as a corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that could sink the city’s police force.

But in this investigation, it seems all roads lead to Rebus — and Clarke’s twin loyalties to the public and the police will be tested to their limit.

A reckoning is coming — and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders...