Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
Published 1987 · 75,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Mystery & Crime, Thriller & Suspense
How hard is Knots and Crosses to read?
Knots and Crosses scores 33 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 38 out of 100
- Scottish vernacular, police terminology. Rankin writes with Edinburgh-inflected directness.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Clean, readable prose. Rankin writes for pace and atmosphere. Short chapters.
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- Edinburgh's duality, the relationship between past and present trauma. Explored through detection.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Edinburgh geography, SAS background, police procedures, and the case. Well-paced.
- Narrative indirection: 35 out of 100
- Third-person following Rebus. The connection between his past and the case is gradually revealed.
- Symbolic density: 38 out of 100
- Edinburgh as Jekyll/Hyde. The knots and crosses as ritual markers. Rebus's flat as psychological state.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Rankin writes with dark humor but genuine investment in Rebus and Edinburgh.
- Resolution withholding: 25 out of 100
- The case is solved. Rebus's connection to the killer is revealed. Clear resolution.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Single-POV police narrative with flashbacks to SAS training. Straightforward structure.
How Knots and Crosses is regarded
Knots and Crosses holds a literary regard score of 69 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.