Do you read books lying down when you're on vacation? It seems these two want to lie down and I can't get them up again. Just turn your head and I'll tell you about them.
Christopher Hyde, thriller writer, is the brother and sometimes a co-author with an old friend of mine, Anthony Hyde. So I felt there would be a good tale in this book, The House of Special Purpose. It is quite dense, with many characters and locations. It is set in the early days of World War II, with references back to events in the Russian Revolution. Historical, then? Quite! And it involves a number of non-fictional people, in roles they might have played, or perhaps did. It was a complex story, with some politics and violence, but in the end, I found it not very satisfying. 
Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus mysteries are well-known, and I thought I had read one before, but it didn't seem all that familiar after all. The story was well told, as a police-procedural mystery, but the language, ah, the language. The story is set in Edinburgh and the Scottishness of the language can be quite mystifying. I suppose I learned some new words, which may be useful in Scrabble. The motivation of some characters mystified me, too, but it was an interesting read.
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