Skinner's Rules

Book 1: BOB SKINNER

by Quintin Jardine

Genres: General Fiction; City Life; Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

As head of Edinburgh’s CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Skinner has seen it all…but even he is shocked by the savagely mutilated corpse discovered in a dark alleyway. The victim is identified as a successful young lawyer, and the motive for the brutal death remains a mystery. Then further seemingly random killings in the city begin to suggest a vicious serial killer on the rampage. But when the lawyer’s fiancee is also murdered, Skinner realises that someone is in deadly earnest. What eventually emerges is an elaborate smokescreen shrouding a deep-rooted and intricate conspiracy. Now, whatever the danger to himslef, Skinner is determined that in Edinburgh, at least, folk will abide by his rules.

Release date: June 11, 2009

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 420

Sample

Did I really want to be ennobled? Did I see myself as Baron Skinner of Gullane?

No I didn’t, when the question had been put. Being Chief Constable Skinner gave me a higher profile than I liked, and I’ve been happy to be shot of that title. However, I’d been invited to discuss the possibility, in good faith as far as I knew, so it would have been churlish of me to reject it out of hand . . . even though the invitation had come to me via my ex-wife.

And also, as I said to Sarah, the potential Lady Skinner, while I had been a visitor to the Westminster village several times in the later years of my police career, I had never been in their lordships’ House; the chance to cross that off my bucket list was too good to pass up.

Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have had time to fit it in, not when I was a serving officer, head of Scotland’s largest force before it was replaced by one even larger, the controversial and almost universally unloved Scottish Police Service.

My critics, and there were plenty of them, rounded on me when I decided not to pursue my application for the position of chief constable, but it isn’t a decision I’ve ever regretted. The truth of the matter was, I was well past my ‘best before’ date as a cop when I quit; most of my close colleagues knew that, but none of them ever told me. I like to believe they were too loyal, rather than too fearful, to suggest it.

Any post-career visions or fears I might have entertained of becoming a house parent and scratch golfer were soon blown away, by a couple of private commissions from friends and acquaintances with problems that. . .