โ Scribed by Quintin Jardine
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
An explosion rocks Princes Street in the midst of the Edinburgh Festival. Responsibility is claimed by a group supposedly demanding political separation from Britain, but as atrocities escalate Skinner realises this is no gang of fanatics, but a highly professional team. The Fighters for an Independent Scotland want the English out of Scotland too and they're ready to back up their demands with bombings, murders and blackmail threats aimed at wreaking havoc at the Edinburgh Festival of the Arts. But the Fighters haven't reckoned with Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner, head of the Edinburgh CID and security adviser to Secretary of State Alan Ballantyne. Even as craven Ballantyne vows empty defiance of the Fighters, defending his principles with the blood of innocent coppers and bystanders, Skinner assembles a crack task force, carries the ball when the Secretary fumbles on the air, and wrestles with the beast within, who emerges with periodic ferocity to foil a clever, greedy scheme involving the crown jewels and Skinner's own daughter.
**
As followers of the arts gather in Scotland's capital city at the end of the summer, so too does a well-organized gang of militant zealots intent on home rule. A bomb explodes in a tent near a shopping center; then an opera singer is murdered. In charge of the case is ranking copper, Robert Skinner, who was introduced in Skinner's Rules and remains a tough and resourceful Scot. While steadily ratcheting up the tension, Jardine provides a lot of annual Edinburgh Festival detail-the sites and the sounds, plays and performances, all of which have to be guarded more closely as the body count grows. Skinner's daughter falls for a mystery man, and his deputy falls for a mystery woman, even as the first clue to the terrorists' identity points to an American woman roaming the country, a killer in more ways than one. Although the identity of one murderer is ludicrously easy to spot, and the too-frequent sex scenes tend to feature such lines as "he drank deeply from the well of her passion," Jardine offers spectacularly effective action scenes, and Skinner, while sometimes too hard-boiled to swallow, is an admirable hero.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Edinburgh's Assistant Chief Constable Robert Skinner investigates an explosion that kills a man during the city's annual Festival of the Arts. A second murder points him in the direction of a team of terrorists whose agenda threatens Scotland's reputation. A solid follow-up to the promising Skinner's Rules (LJ
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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