Now that I’ve finished the Rebus books I am working through Rankin’s other stuff. Watchman starts off very John Le Carré, with the dejected middle-aged spy protagonist in a dead-end career and failing marriage, and then lurches rather unexpectedly into an action adventure in Ireland with a rather implausible IRA plot thread (this is 1988 or so). Rankin is not really at his ease when playing away from home, and the best bit of the book is the final dénouement set in Edinburgh (for no terribly good plot-related reason). Minor stuff really.