THREE short words on the cover announce the reason for the excitement: “Rebus is back.”

Yes, Rankin has resurrected his sardonic, lovably infuriating Edinburgh cop, the perennial sourpuss who had to retire when he got too old.

Now he is haunting the fringes of his old job, working as a civilian assistant in a cold cases unit; still causing trouble much in the way he always did, still valiant in a battered, soured manner; still certain he is right, whatever his bosses say.

The case he is involved in concerns a series of seemingly unconnected disappearances stretching back to the millennium. In each case, a young woman went missing and a picture was sent to the mobile phones of a loved one, showing an apparently mysterious location in the Scottish countryside.

The pace is different, the story more reflective, and in many senses this becomes almost a Scottish road movie, as Rebus drives his faithful old Saab many miles in search of an answer. He finds one in the end, of course, but it does not answer all the questions he started out with, in a book which also ponders the meaning of death.

In Rankin’s bravest and best decision, Rebus has to face up to Malcolm Fox, the character Rankin invented as his replacement in the Complaints novels that came afterwards.

Fox is the anti-Rebus, sober, cautious and dry, a professional stickler for the rules; and he is after rule-bending Rebus. The two men do not get on, naturally, which creates an interesting dynamic in a dialogue-driven novel which races towards the end, but still has a thoughtful air.