Review of Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (2013, Orion)

For his last case in internal affairs DI Malcolm Fox has been assigned to investigate a 30 year old murder case in which the police team was suspected of helping the perpetrator evade justice. It’s a case from the start of Rebus’ career when he was a new member of the ‘Saints of the Shadow Bible’, a group of detectives who brandished their own form of justice when the system failed to adequately punish criminals. Retired and now re-employed to work cold cases, Rebus is clinging on to being a police officer. His old team are relying on him to stifle the investigation, but that’s hardly his modus operandi, even if it means he could bring himself down. It’s a distraction he doesn’t need however given he’s got a whiff of something off in a car crash involving the justice minister’s son, which is quickly followed by the minister’s death. His old colleague DI Siobhan Clarke is involved in that case, which provides Rebus the opportunity to interfere. Rankin nicely brings his three principle characters together through the investigation of the old and new cases, spinning an intriguing and entertaining tale. As usual the strength of the story are the lead characters and their interaction, the well-constructed plot, and the contextualisation and extension of the longer series arc that made the installment feel like catching up with an old friend. My sense was that there wasn’t an element out of place.

Review of Rather Be The Devil by Ian Rankin (Orion, 2016)

John Rebus is retired but he has a new partner and a file of cold cases to keep himself occupied. One case in particular preys on his mind. Maria Turquand, the promiscuous wife of a wealthy banker, was killed in her hotel room forty years ago. Rebus was on the fringe of the case and now uses his friendship with DI Siobhan Clarke to access old files. Clarke is investigating an attack on Darryl Christie, the new crime lord in the city. DI Malcolm Fox also has an interest in Christie and his extensive money laundering operation and his connections to the activities of a shady financier. A few hours after Rebus talks to an old colleague about the Turquand case the man is dead and a team from Police Scotland parachuted in to investigate, with Fox and Clarke drafted in to help. Rebus immediately starts stepping on toes as he continues his investigation, becoming more intrigued as his cold case and the investigation into Christie’s attack and operations start to blur. Meanwhile, Big Ger Cafferty stirs the pot from edges sensing a chance to profit from his protégé’s troubles.

Rather Be The Devil is the twenty first instalment of the Rebus series. Rather than becoming tired and clichéd, the series still has a freshness and verve. The relationship between Rebus, his former sidekick Siobhan Clarke, and old rival now friend, Malcolm Fox, and his rivalry with Big Ger Cafferty and Darryl Christie, continues to evolve and shift. And Rankin keeps the police procedural elements up-to-date as the organisation, politics and practices of Scottish policing transforms. Beyond the characters and the context, it is the quality of the storytelling that really shines. Rankin’s voice is very engaging, with an excellent blend of present case and continuing series threads, with a strong grounding in the everyday – these are characters and situations that seem real, rather than exceptional or extraordinary. The story in this outing is particularly compelling, investigating a cold case of the murder of vivacious banker’s wife and investigating a current attack against a young crime lord and murder of the last detective to examine the cold case. It’s somewhat unbelievable that there are so many connections between the three events, but Rankin handles these nicely rather than it being a series of clunky coincidences, and they add to rather than detract from story. Overall, an entertaining crime tale and a strong addition to the series.

Review of Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin (2015, Orion)

A senior lawyer has been murdered.  It’s appears to be a robbery gone wrong until a threatening note is found.  Then a shot is taken at Big Ger Cafferty, an Edinburgh crime boss who has received an identical note.  DI Siobhan Clarke is investigating both cases, but Cafferty will only deal with Rebus and the old cop is bought out of retirement as a ‘consultant’.  It doesn’t take Rebus long to pick up the scent of an old crime being revenged.  Cafferty has other worries as well.  A notorious Glasgow criminal and his gang are making waves in the city and Daryl Christie, his one-time lieutenant, is playing games.  DI Malcolm Fox has been assigned local liaison to a surveillance team from Glasgow, but he’s an unwanted team member and his fondness for procedure soon causes friction.  With tensions rising, Rebus, Clarke and Fox work to stop dog eating dog.

Even Dogs in the Wild is the twentieth book in the Rebus series.  One problem with long-running series is maintaining the freshness of the plots and interest in the characters.  Rankin suffers neither problem.  In this outing the plot consists of two separate investigations – an incursion into Edinburgh by a Glasgow-based gang and the deaths of a lawyer, a lottery winner and a potshot at crime boss, Big Ger Cafferty.  What joins the two plot lines are the involvement of principle characters of DI Clarke, DI Fox, recently retired Rebus, and Cafferty, and good old fashioned detective work.  Rankin keeps the parallel stories both ticking along at a clip and nicely balances the investigations with the evolving relationships between the characters.  The result is an entertaining and enjoyable police procedural that taps into current events and the exposure of past ones.  The only bit that felt a little underdeveloped was the end, which seemed to tail off and left untold the aftermath and fallout of the cases.  Nonetheless, another strong addition to the series.

Bosch, Rebus and Maxine

It was interesting to read Michael Connelly’s The Black Box and Ian Rankin’s Standing in Another Man’s Grave back to back.  There’s a lot of similarities between the two series.  Both follow the exploits of maverick cops who have analogous characteristics and histories.  Harry Bosch and John Rebus both started out in the army before becoming cops.  Both are laws unto themselves who have their own approaches that bend rules and set them in conflict with their bosses, and both are no strangers to be investigated by internal watchdogs.  They survive because they solve difficult puzzles and get results, and they have been protected by senior cops who have watched their backs.  Their careers trajectories are also similar, with both cops having retired as detectives to be taken back on in cold case units.  In both cases their personal lives are a bit of a mess, each has a daughter with whom they have a difficult relationship, and they are obsessive about music.  Both detectives have featured in eighteen novels, and both authors are published by Orion.  I’ve read 15 of the Bosch books and all of Rebus. 

So what are the differences?  For me, the main differences are that Bosch acts more in a solo capacity, whereas Rebus is anarchic but tries harder to bring his colleagues along with him; the Bosch novels tend more towards thriller-like finales, whereas Rebus cases tend to play out in more understated but equally dramatic ways; and Rankin tends to have more layered and complex stories with nuanced subplots and stronger secondary characters (especially in the latter books in both series).  That said, both are exceptionally strong series, with main characters that have built up loyal followings for good reasons - compelling lead characters, strong sense of place, good contextualisation, and strong plotting.

I’m sure that this would have been a post that Maxine Clarke, an avid crime fiction fan, reviewer of books on her blog Petrona, and curator of the Crime and Mystery Friendfeed, would have commented on.  Connelly and Rankin rated amongst her favourite authors and she always had a perceptive observation to offer.  Sadly, Maxine passed away on Monday morning after a long illness.  She was a great friend of this blog, especially when I first started out, inviting me into the Friendfeed community and introducing me to other crime fiction bloggers.  She will be sadly missed by authors and readers for her constructive critical appraisal and by the community of crime fiction bloggers for whom she was a key catalyst and energetic friend.  A measure of the esteem in which she is held is the number of tributes that have been written in her honour over the past couple of days - links to them all are listed on Margot Kinberg's blog.  I hope she’s comfortably settled in the ‘big library in the sky’.

Review of Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin (Orion, 2012)

After being forced to retire from CID, John Rebus has ended up as a civilian working in a cold case unit.  He’s frustrated to be away from the energy of live cases, but it’s better than no job at all.  When a woman approaches the unit claiming a link between a number of missing person cases, including the recent death of a teenage girl, Rebus manages to inveigle his way onto the fringes of the main case via his ex-colleague DI Siobhan Clarke.  Rebus has lost none of his old, anachronistic ways, seeing potential leads that others miss, prodding and probing potential witnesses, and kicking up the sand at the bottom of the pool to see what rises, rather than relying on formal procedure, forensics and files.  Beyond Clarke, nobody seems happy with his presence or methods, but he produces leads.  The question is whether he can hang on in until the case is solved or survive the attention of ‘the complaint’s unit’.  Given his track record, neither look likely, especially given his weekly drinking sessions with his nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty.

Having retired his famous detective a couple of books ago, Ian Rankin places him front and centre in Standing in Another Man’s Grave.  It’s a very welcome return in a thoroughly entertaining story.  Rankin always scores well on several fronts - characterisation, sense of place, contextualisation, plotting - and it’s no different with this tale, which is layered and complex.  Although the main focus is Rebus and the main case under investigation, Rankin does not neglect the host of secondary characters and their interrelations, and he interlinks several subplots that give the story a rich texture.  For the most part the plotting is excellent, though it unravels a little in the final scenes, the resolution somewhat weak and a little unconvincing.  Nevertheless, Rankin shows his skills at producing a multi-textual, engaging police procedural that hooks the reader in and tugs them along on a compelling jaunt.  Despite eighteen outings, there’s still plenty of life in the old detective and hopefully there’s more to come.

Review of The Complaints by Ian Rankin (Orion, 2009)

Malcolm Fox works for the Conduct and Complaints section, the police unit that investigates other cops. Almost universally disliked, Fox and his colleagues run a small, tight ship, and expect little help or friendliness from the colleagues of those they investigate. Having just managed to wrap-up a case against Glenn Heaton, a cop who bends the rules to get results, Fox is asked to start an investigation into the conduct of Jamie Breck, a cop in the same team as Heaton suspected of purchasing online child porn. Almost immediately the partner of his sister, a man who has recently broken her arm in a row, is found beaten to death, and to complicate things Breck is part of the team investigating his murder, with Heaton’s boss in overall command. Fox starts to bend the rules himself, befriending Breck, unable to trust the other cops to do a good job, especially as they seem to be using the case to get at him. Soon, Fox has the tables turned on him, suspended from duty, along with Breck, and subject of a conduct investigation. Unsure who to trust, Fox needs to clear his name and find the killer of his sister’s partner.

Rankin is a skilled author, who seems to write effortlessly. Well plotted and structured, with workmanlike prose, the pages flip past. Very quickly, the reader is immersed in Fox’s world, his backstory, his relationships with family and key actors, and the city he lives and works in. As with Rankin’s previous books, Edinburgh is a character in itself – its geography, history and sense of place. The Complaints is an entertaining read, engaging with the present economic crisis and the downturn in the property market. As I posted a couple of days ago, my only real quibble was the core characters; I didn’t really take to any of them, especially in the first half of the book. I slightly warmed to Fox in the final quarter, but I didn’t find myself rooting for him in the same way as Rebus and Siobhan Clarke. That said, I will almost certainly read the next Rankin novel to feature Fox and ‘the complaints’ section.