# The Flood

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/ian-rankin/the-flood/9780752883694

![The Flood](https://quivercdn.com/covers/orion/ian-rankin/the-flood_978-07-5288-369-4.jpg?v=2026-05-11%2018%3A32%3A09)

- Book: [The Flood](https://www.bookquiver.com/ian-rankin/the-flood) ([The Flood.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/ian-rankin/the-flood.md))
- Authors: [Ian Rankin](https://www.bookquiver.com/ian-rankin), [Donald Pirie](https://www.bookquiver.com/donald-pirie)
- Publisher: Orion
- ISBN: 978-07-5288-369-4
- Pages: 1
- Published: 2012-05-24
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

The book that began Ian Rankin's phenomenal career. From the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES 'The themes that would come to dominate the Rebus books are already here ... the blurred boundaries between good and evil; the pull of superstition and myth; the difficulties in escaping and resolving one's past; the emotional complexities of the male of the species; and, not least, a good mystery' TIME OUT Mary Miller had always been an outcast. Burnt in a chemical mix as a young girl, sympathy for her quickly faded when the young man who pushed her in died in a mining accident just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community. Now, years later, she is a single mother, caught up in a faltering affair with a local teacher. Her son, Sandy, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. The search for happiness isn't easy. Both mother and son must face a dark secret from their past, in the growing knowledge that their small dramas are being played out against a much larger canvas, glimpsed only in symbols and flickering images - of decay and regrowth, of fire and water - of the flood.