Dead Souls is a 1999 crime novel by Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin, OBE, DL , is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.-Background:He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath...

. It is the tenth of the Inspector Rebus

Inspector Rebus

The Inspector Rebus books are a series of detective novels by the Scottish author Ian Rankin. The novels, centred on the title character Detective Inspector John Rebus, are mostly based in and around Edinburgh.-Content and style:...

 novels. It was the third episode in the Rebus

Rebus (TV series)

Rebus is the title of the detective drama based on the Inspector Rebus novels by the Scottish author Ian Rankin set in and around Edinburgh produced by STV Productions for the ITV Network....

television series starring John Hannah

John Hannah (actor)

John David Hannah is a Scottish actor of film and television. He has appeared in Stephen Sommers' Mummy Series, Richard Curtis' Four Weddings and a Funeral and Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow...

, airing in 2001.

Plot summary

While investigating a poisoner at Edinburgh Zoo

Edinburgh Zoo

Edinburgh Zoo, formally the Scottish National Zoological Park, is a non-profit zoological park located in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland...

, Detective Inspector John Rebus

Detective Inspector John Rebus

Detective Inspector John Rebus is the protagonist in the Inspector Rebus series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Ian Rankin, ten of which have so far been televised as Rebus...

 sees a known paedophile photographing children. After a chase ending in the sea lion

Sea Lion

Sea lions are pinnipeds characterized by external ear-flaps, long fore-flippers, the ability to walk on all fours, and short thick hair. Together with the fur seal, they comprise the family Otariidae, or eared seals. There are six extant and one extinct species in five genera...

 enclosure, Rebus decides to 'out' the man, in spite of assurances that he is trying to reform. As a campaign against the man starts, Rebus hears that the son of an ex-girlfriend has gone missing and starts investigating his disappearance from a nightclub with a mysterious blonde.

A convicted killer comes back from the U.S. having served his time in prison, with an agenda he wants to pursue. Rankin incorporated the novella Death Is Not the End as the missing person plot-line of this novel.

Title

The title refers to Joy Division

Joy Division

Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis , Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris .Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences...

's song "Dead Souls" and to the 1842 Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

 novel Dead Souls

Dead Souls

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...

, quotes from which appear at the beginnings of the two parts of the book.

Television adaptation

The television adaptation has significant plot differences from the novel. These concern the fate of the missing person, the nature of the relationship between Rebus and his ex-girlfriend, and the character of her husband.