Review - A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin

A Song for the Dark Times (Rebus, 23)
Ian Rankin
Orion, 1 October 2020
Available as: HB, 336pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy via Netgalley
ISBN: 9781409176978

I'm SO grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of A Song for the Dark Times via NetGalley.

And Rebus goes on. I had a little trouble finding which number in the series is - I think it's 23, but actually, does it matter? I'm just glad to have another chance to meet the awkward, driven, intractable old sod. (Readers though may like me be alarmed at what's going on in the first few pages of the book...)

In recent Rebus books, accepting that he's no longer on the Force, Rankin has at times had to stretch things a bit to give John an in to the investigation. In A Song for the Dark Times this is finessed very nicely: Keith, partner to Rebus's daughter Samantha, has gone missing to of course it's into the clapped out old Saab and off up the A9 to try and find him. That mystery, and the worse one that emerges as Rebus begins to poke around, gives him a perfect excuse to get involved because he's family.

Which is not to say that the local police welcome or even accept him getting involved in their enquiry (and nor does Sammy, as things spiral out of control). But he's clearly in the right place and doing the right thing.

Back in Edinburgh, Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox are working on a more conventional enquiry - a wealthy Saudi student, whose father is in disfavour back at home, has been found dead in a bad part of town. There are all kinds of sensitivities, and Cafferty seems to be taking an interest. So lots to  chew on there and we get to see something I've long been hoping for, a story with Clarke as its focus, out of Rebus's shadow (and taint). Fox may have got the fancy promotion rather than her, but she's, always, clearly the more capable of the two, albeit they work together well (including on looking after Rebus's long-suffering dog, Brillo).

The result is, effectively, a pair of parallel stories showcasing Rebus at his most driven and implacable (his little girl is at risk!) and Clarke being generally on top of things. Brilliant to read, and also allowing Rankin to divert off to the history of the local camp (variously used for internments, POWs and refugees) that Keith is interested in and to the precarious state of Cafferty's crime empire. The latter looks as though it's sowing the seeds for future storylines in a series that continues to satisfy.

Amongst all this, Rankin has his sights set on dodgy land deals, on the scapegoating of foreigners (both in the 1940s, with internments in the camps, and now, with assaults following Brexit) and perhaps on rich, entitled students ('no visible bookcases'). But these are more background themes than foreground concerns with the story dominated by Rebus's family concerns, especially a sense of regret that he wasn't a better  husband and father and by the axis between Fox and Clarke (there seems more of a spark between them than there is between her and Sutherland, notionally her lover).

Overall, another very enjoyable Rebus novel.

For more information about the book, see the Orion website here.

Review - In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin

In a House of Lies (Rebus, 22)
Ian Rankin
Orion, 4 October 2018
HB, 384pp

I'm grateful to the publishers for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

In a House of Lies is, of course, the latest book about John Rebus, sometime DI with Lothian and Borders Police. That will be enough for most people to just decide to read - it would (was) be enough for me. But as this series evolves, Rankin continues to develop his characters  and to address new challenges and there is a fair bit here to analyse, so please indulge me.

Rebus is now retired and in declining health. Ill with COPD (the two flights of stairs to his flat becoming "a definite issue"), he has given up smoking - couldn't get too grips with vaping, too tech - and is largely off the booze (the Oxford Bar hardly features, and we even witness Rebus visiting a pub... for a coffee).

Lothian and Borders Police has gone, too, swallowed up into Police Scotland, a unitary force run from the glossy "crime campus" at Gartcosh, miles from Edinburgh. Instead of local detectives investigating murders, a mobile squad - MIT ("Major Incident Team") is parachuted in as required with experienced cops like Siobhan Clarke squeezed out. It's not hard to see Rankin's frustration with this situation ("This was the way things were now, thanks to the changes at Police Scotland - local CID reduced to a secondary role..." "Police Scotland's process of centralisation meant a lot of local information-gathering either didn't happen or went ignored") especially since in recent books he's had to devote a lot of ingenuity not only to making Rebus's presence, but even that of Clarke, the other real regular from the old days, plausible, even before getting the story itself moving.

In a House of Lies achieves the former by making one of Rebus's old cases relevant again when a missing person is found long dead. Rebus can therefore be brought in to elucidate the botched enquiry from 2006 and as a bonus, Malcolm Fox gets to give the original case papers a once-over. Clarke is attached to the enquiry for her local knowledge. In terms of plausibility I think this is one of the better set-ups of recent books (Rebus doesn't have to keep trying to blag his way into the enquiry room) even if it does mean repeating what feels like a bit of a running theme: Rebus in the sights of Complaints for past failings and potentially taking the rap for the corrupt and lazy - even though (as we know well) he may always have been unconventional, but was never corrupt or lazy.

It's perhaps in keeping with this somewhat backward-looking and even elegiac mood that a recurring theme here is memory and its trickiness. Clarke stores names on her phone, in case she forgets them. Rebus accuses her and her generation of having short memories, and having "forgotten how to store information". He wonders about the point of "dusting off people's memories" from the earlier enquiry, and how soon they will forget the body found in the woods. Amidst all this loss of memory, despite the vague promise that soon it will all be "kept in the Cloud, whatever that is", it's not surprisingly Rebus - and his old nemesis Cafferty - who know what's what even if "it was hard [for Rebus] to remember the person he'd been, new to the city and new to the job" (a bit of a sly joke there, perhaps, given the way that Rankin has reinvented and reinterpreted Rebus over the course of this series).

But this series is far from becoming a showcase for grumpy old men (whether characters or author). There is a considerable freshness to In a House of Lies whether it's the greater sense of equality between Clarke, Rebus and Fox (in previous books, there has been a hierarchy which has dotted about a bit with one or the other of the three on top at different times depending who is investigating who, whether Rebus is in or out of the police and where Clarke is in her career), Rebus (finally!) taking more care of his health or - oddly - Cafferty, who clearly has Plans (and is considerably more adroit with the tech than Rebus, as Rankin makes clear when describing his infosec measures)

The story itself is pacy, twisty and substantial. Apart from the body that comes to light, Clarke is being threatened, giving her an early excuse to bring in Rebus with a relatively self-contained task. I thought for a while that was going to be Rebus's main role in the story, with the focus on her. That might not be before time (personally I'd love a series of Siobhan Clarke novels with Rebus backgrounded) but perhaps Rankin knows his audience too well for this. At any rate, Rebus gets plenty to do here, and on the main case, though perhaps he doesn't quite own the stage as in the past.

I only had a couple of reservations. First, in a couple of places the portrayal of secondary women characters seemed a bit perfunctory, with a main feature being how much make-up they wore - either too much, or little or none because "she really didn't need it" (of course, it may be she just didn't bother with it, or was in a bit of a hurry that morning...)

And there's reference to Cafferty's investment in a low budget British film in the mid 2000s having produced a profit. No way was there a profit - that investment would have been for tax purposes, designed to produce a loss. However, perhaps that's not a lapse by Rankin and Cafferty knew this all along - or the producer would have received an unwelcome surprise of some sort - and is spinning a line for Rebus.

OK, maybe I'm being a bit picky here. Overall, for me, this is one of the best, if not the best, Rebus story since Rankin brought the character back after Exit Music. It has a complex, satisfying story, plenty of atmosphere and lots for my favourite three detectives to do, with, apparently, plenty of life still in the series.

Review - Rather be the Devil

Image from www.ianrankin.net

Rather be the Devil
Ian rankin
Orion, 3 November 2016
HB, 310pp

Source: bought from Goldsboro Books.

This is, I think, the 21st outing for John Rebus. I've been reading these since Black and Blue in 1997 (I found Rebus when a short story appeared in my university alumnus mag - how's that for convoluted book discovery?)

One of the things I enjoy is that Rankin is never afraid to keep the mood fresh by shifting Rebus around. He's been a muscly ex-Army action man, albeit beset by traumatic memories. he's been a divorced cop missing his kid and resenting he ex-wife's new partner. He's gone through books constantly living musical references. He's, increasingly, been the maverick on the CID team, marginalised and distrusted. And for a time, the books were less about him than the ensemble as Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox came on the scene. Indeed for a time it seemed as though they might take over - I'd have welcomed a series of books about Clarke, in particular.

Now, though, in another shift, Rebus seems to be centre stage again despite now being definitively out of the police (he was back in for a couple of years but has finally retired). So he's a spare part, a loose cannon, still investigating crime but with no official standing. That means, at time, Rankin needs to stretch things a bit in order to allow him to play a part - I suspect the access he gets here is pretty implausible, really. But the story is saved from being unbelievable by, of all things, a (real) change in the structure and organisation of the Scottish police. It seems that the separate forces have been combined, with everything now coming under the control of the Strathclyde (Glasgow) force, who parachute their own in to investigate anything interesting. So Clarke is just as much out in the cold as Rebus: and Fox, who's been promoted to the shiny new "crime campus" but assigned back to Edinburgh to keep an eye on things is, again, resented as an outsider.

So it's three misfits who team up for this book. And that seems wholly right and proper for a Rebus case. It hardly matters what the case is: once the slightly awkward setup in the first third of the book is done with, we can sit back and enjoy the banter and the friction between these perfectly realised characters.

There's more, of course: a romance for Rebus (I hope and pray it will last), renewed friction between old school villain Cafferty and Darryl Christie, a long- forgotten murder in the Caley Hotel that Rebus can't let go of, and a health scare. To a degree the book - especially that first part - has an elegaic quality, a sense that the past is being put to bed, whether it's Rebus's buccaneering days, the culture and organisation of the Edinburgh police or the crime syndicates of yore. (And with that shadow on the lung, it could be Rubus himself...)

But that doesn't prevent action, and just because things have their roots in the past, who's to say they can't - to mix metaphors - erupt in the present? I found the final two thirds of this book, and especially the climax, as exciting as any of the Rebus novels and indeed perhaps more so than the last few. Rebus may get out of breath climbing a few flights of stairs, and he may have to cadge his way into the CID suite, but he's as as sharp and sly as ever.

And these books are as sharp and sly and entertaining as ever.

Strongly recommended.