Resurrection Men

Eddie Marber, an art gallery owner with expensive tastes and poor judgement, ends up dumped on Calton Hill. Suspicion falls on an artist whose work he refused to hang, and a valuable painting has gone missing from his flat. The case lands with DS Clarke, which means Rebus should be in the middle of it. But instead he is packed off to a rehabilitation course at the police school after a public tantrum, which reads to everyone who knows him as suspiciously convenient. It is. The course is cover for a proper job: expose DI Frances Grey and DI Jazz McCulloch, two corrupt officers running a protection racket that numbers among its clients the very sauna Marber used.

The pair are suspected of murdering and robbing a drug dealer who would not play along, and of having a hand in Eddie's death. Officially Rebus is off the case. He cannot tell Siobhan what he is really doing, and he cannot stop the two men killing again if they choose to. So he does what he always does: he pulls the strands together and waits for them to tighten.

Des McAleer's Grey and Jon Morrison's McCulloch make a properly unsettling pair, the kind of bent coppers who give the job a bad name and enjoy doing it. Stella Gonet is Cynthia Marber, Jason Hetherington is Edward Marber, Bryan Larkin is Charlie Guthrie, Ron Donachie is Jack Gunner and Jamie Michie is Danny Kerr. Jennifer Black's DCS Gill Templer keeps the pressure on from above. Ken Stott and Claire Price lead the cast, and Ian Rankin and David Kane wrote it, with Roger Gartland directing.

The missing painting keeps the mystery ticking while the corruption story does the real work, and the two never quite line up the way you expect. None of it can be rushed. Rebus has to keep all the strands moving without letting the men he is hunting see him coming.

It is a strong season opener, and it lets Rebus do what he does best: work a case nobody wants him to win.