I’ve been a big fan of Ian Rankin for a long time. When I was in England on sabbatical five years ago, I binge read all the volumes in the John Rebus series I had missed before. Here’s the pre-pub summary from Amazon on this latest 384 page crime thriller….
“Rebus’ retirement is disrupted once again when skeletal remains are identified as a private investigator who went missing over a decade earlier. The remains, found in a rusted car in the East Lothian woods, not far from Edinburgh, quickly turn into a cold case murder investigation. Rebus’ old friend, Siobhan Clarke is assigned to the case, but neither of them could have predicted what buried secrets the investigation will uncover.
Rebus remembers the original case–a shady land deal–all too well. After the investigation stalled, the family of the missing man complained that there was a police cover-up. As Clarke and her team investigate the cold case murder, she soon learns a different side of her mentor, a side he would prefer to keep in the past.
A gripping story of corruption and consequences, this new novel demonstrates that Rankin and Rebus are still at the top of their game.”
But what this novel has a subtext is as important as the story line itself— namely the lies that families tell each other in order to keep order, or the status quo, or prevent having to confess to stupidity, or mayhem, or some other lie. In this particular novel by family Rankins means not just the nuclear family, but in fact the police force, or subdivisions thereof that work together all the time, and spend more time with each other than with their actual families, if they still have any. But John Rebus is a solitary man, living alone, though not without a girlfriend who is a clinician who does autopsies for the city and the police. Lovely. Here’s a little sample from p. 293, to show you what I mean by subtext—- These are John Rebus’s reflections, the greatest of detectives.
“He had lied about not passing information to Alex Shankley. He’d lied too to cover Skelton and Rawlston’s asses. He’d turned a blind eye to the manifest shortcomings of Newsome and the likes of Steele and Edwards. Instead, he’d made more frequent visits to various pubs, using alcohol to blur everything and make it all right. Less than a year from his retirement, he begun to fear that the job was just that— a job rather than a vocation. He couldn’t solve every crime, and even if he did, crime would keep happening so what was the point?…People would always be rapacious and lustful and envious and angry.” And then Rebus turns and watches some school children apparently happy just leaving school for the day…. “He knew he was looking at the future, but also that the futures these various young people imagined for themselves might not work out the way they had hoped. There’d be tears and traumas along the way, mistakes made, promises broken. Some would marry their sweethearts and live to regret it. Others would break apart. A few would trouble the police in later years. There’d be early deaths from disease and maybe even a suicide or two. Right now none of that would seem feasible to them. They were alive in and of the moment— and that was all that mattered.”
Yet Rebus knew there was more to life than just broken promises and failure and lies. He knew that good could still come out of difficult and dicey situations, and he was always working toward that end— even when it had to involve settling for an approximation of the good— the best that could be done in the fallen situation. These novels are full of flawed characters and situation. They seem quite grey, like the skies most days in Edinburgh, both the setting of the novels and the home of Rankin himself. Surprisingly enough, these novels are also full of excitement and even hope glimmering on the horizon now and again. Clearly, John Rebus needs to be back on the force or to get a better hobby than walking his dog and dating a woman who spends every day with corpses.
I highly recommend this novel, but not as your first Rebus novel. See my previous posts on Rankin’s thrillers for a guide.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In