3 ideas
Between 1968 and 1969, three young women were murdered in Glasgow after nights out at the Barrowland Ballroom. A man who quoted scripture was seen with the last victim, and the press named him 'Bible John'. Despite one of Scotland's largest manhunts, he was never identified, and the novel builds its present-day killings on this real unsolved case.
When a copycat revives a dormant killer's legend, the original loses control of his own myth. The novel imagines Bible John alive under a respectable identity, drawn out of concealment by the copycat 'Johnny Bible' and hunting the imitator himself. The copycat threatens the original twice: by stealing his identity and by bringing fresh police scrutiny onto the old case.
A shortcut taken to secure a conviction does not stay closed. It becomes a debt that can be called in whenever a journalist, an inquiry or a dead man's campaign reopens it. Rebus is investigated over an old conviction in which evidence may have been planted by a colleague he trusted. His loyalty to that colleague leaves him exposed at the same moment he is hunting a killer.