Now that Rebus has retired, but is finding ways back into police work, Rankin seems to be hitting a new consistency of excellence. Here, Rebus and colleagues get tangled in a dodgy car accident whose ostensible only victim’s boyfriend is the son of Scotland’s Justice Minister, with links into both the 2014 independence referendum campaign and the more robust and less ethical policing days of two decades ago. Then the bodies start turning up, and Rebus finds that he himself is closer to the source of the story than he would like to be. It’s all intricately woven and unwoven, with nobody completely admirable in their behaviour and some pretty awful. There is a comedy relief scrapyard, which is a nice touch. Long may this continue.
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The world’s number theorists (well, mostly Andrew Sutherland) are working hard on it, and if everything on that page checks out, the gap was down to 248,898 as of 14th June. (This kind of parameter optimization will most likely peter out well before the gap is in single digits, and then there will need to be more conceptual breakthroughs.)
Update: down to 12,006 as of 1st July.