Hide and Seek (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Hide and Seek
orig title =
translator =


author = Ian Rankin
cover_artist =
country = Scotland
language = English
series =
genre = Detective novel
publisher = Orion Press
release_date = 1991
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 272 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-7528-0941-5
preceded_by = Knots and Crosses
followed_by = Tooth and Nail

"Hide and Seek" is a 1991 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the second of the Inspector Rebus novels.

Plot summary

Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club, where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing.

Rankin has stated that he wanted to update Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for the modern age. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!"