Exit Music is the seventeenth crime novel in the internationally bestselling Inspector Rebus series, written by Ian Rankin.

Rebus finds Cafferty's hand in many schemes (drugs, abusive landlord practices), but the biggest ones involve real estate and are quite legitimate.

Meanwhile DS Siobhan Clarke, on the cusp of promotion to DI and given charge of the case, tries to find her own way, both dreading and looking forward to losing her mentor.

The character of Malcolm Fox, who is assigned to “the Complaints” or Internal Affairs investigating police corruption, is well-prepared for in Exit Music.

Rebus began his career in a world where even good policemen lied on the witness stand to protect each other or, as in the Spaven case described in Black and Blue, to frame a likely culprit.

This last scene [of Exit Music] illustrates that Rebus has an investment in a patriarchy structured around evil and good, while Clarke … is already an inhabitant of a postpatriarchal world more alert to social, cultural and political complexities.