There ought to be a law against it!

On second thoughts, perhaps not. But Gordon McLean, a fellow Rebus fan, certainly has a point.

I feel his pain:

I have my copies of every previous Rebus paperback arranged in order on a shelf in the living room. They are all the same A format paperback size (178mm by 111mm if you really want to know), have the same styling and are all neatly numbered on the back. They look neat and tidy sitting directly underneath a shelf that has quite a few Iain Banks novels, all with the same styled black and white covers (i.e. not his Sci-Fi stuff). Neat and tidy.

So imagine my disgust when, upon opening that clever Amazon packaging, I find a book that is a completely different size to, and has a completely different cover design from, all the other Rebus books I own.

Of course, if I weren't an anarcho-capitalist I would be demanding a law against these outrages. And it's not just Inspector Rebus: I mean YOU, the Policy Institute, and YOU, Outdoor Photography magazine, and even YOU the Scotsman. We liked you all the size you were. Thank goodness for the decades-long quiet conservatism of the Prestwick Airport Letter (no link, no colour, few photos - just like it was in the '60s!).

So, if there can't be "a law against it", what's to be done?

Surely, the answer's obvious. One of us should write a crime thriller in which the offending publishers are mysteriously bumped off, one by one, in a manner so diabolical and fiendish that even Inspector Rebus can't work out whodunit, never mind the motive.