Paul Johnston — The Bone Yard

Hodder & Stoughton 1999 Paperback, 314pp. "New Year's Eve 2021. The one night of the year when the guards are less vigilant. The perfect time for murder. Welcome to twenty-first-century Edinburgh: an oppressive, crime-free independent city state, run by the Council of City Guardians. New Labour has failed, and in the disastrous break-up of Britain, city states have formed fiefdoms, walling themselves off from other warring parts. In the "perfect" city republic of Edinburgh, electricity, food, and even sex are rationed. Television, private cars, and cigarettes are banned, and crime is a distant memory. But when the mutilated body of a man is found, subversive, blues-haunted private investigator Quintilian Dalrymple and his side-kick Davie are put back on the case. They must uncover the significance of the killer's eerie calling card-a blues cassette planted inside the victims' bodies.", (ISBN: 9780340694930). Good.