At the start of April, I published a blog (https://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/2024/04/fife-flyers.html) dedicated to the non-Inspector Rebus works of Ian Rankin, promising that I’d return with another one about the character Rankin is best known for, once I’d done the hard yards by reading the rest of the books. Well, here it is: my consideration of 24 novels, a volume of short stories, 2 stage plays and a quasi-travel guide all about Fife’s greatest cop, curmudgeon, music obsessive and pub habitue, all in one place…
As I mentioned last time, my 2024 reading resolution was to complete the entire published works of Ian Rankin. Considering that until I began my Christmas Holiday in December 2023, the only Rebus novels I’d read were Saints of the Shadow Bible and Naming of the Dead, this was a decent task I set myself. Luckily, I took heed of one of the most important bits of advice I was given about reading the entire Rankin oeuvre; namely, it didn’t essentially matter which order I read the books in, which is just as well as I’d started my journey with volume 19, then moved on to volume 16. Consequently, I then ploughed my way through the collected short story collection, The Beat Goes On, which included the novella Death is not the End that was revisited in an expanded form in Dead Souls. Confused? Keep reading, I hope it will all become clear.
Here’s
something that won’t endear me to Ian Rankin. Even though I’ve read almost his
entire published works, I’ve never bought one of them new. At first, I came
across the first few books on the shelves at New York & Murton WMC. Rather
like the austere Goths of Rebus and Rankin’s home territory of Fife, New York
club isn’t a luxurious or glamorous watering hole. It’s a scruffy, neglected
ale house with a huge bookcase full of dog-eared paperbacks that you’re invited
to take from and replenish when you can. Amazingly, I found these Rebus books
going free and so I replaced them with titles I owned that I hadn’t enjoyed (no
names; no pack drill).
When this well had run dry, my affection for Rebus had turned, little by little, into an addiction. I found myself utterly wrapped up by the novels and the world they inhabit; not just in terms of working out the various aspects of a whodunnit, but well and truly invested in the lives of Rebus himself, and also other characters, such as Siobhan Clarke (a hero as she’s a Hibee), the maligned but not malignant Malcolm Fox, Big Ger Cafferty (a really violent heterosexual man) and a whole load of others. Of course, the 2024 BBC Scotland series Rebus also impacted upon my consciousness. Goodness, I enjoyed it, even if Siobhan, Malcolm and, especially, Michael Rebus were utterly different to how I (and presumably Ian Rankin) had imagined them.
To feed my addiction, I scoured the second-hand shops of North Shields and Whitley Bay for the books I was missing, picking up a few titles here and there, but then when I really needed to join the dots and complete the collection, it involved some sustained digging on Ebay, where I managed to get all the ones I was missing for around £2.50 a pop, including P&P. Hence, once the deliveries arrived, all I had to do was read the buggers and now that task is complete, I’m going to write about those same buggers. Despite the fact I didn’t read them in chronological order, I’m going to discuss them that way, so get yourself a long spoon and get ready to sup up knowledge and opinions about the fly Fifers…
1 Knots and Crosses (1987): It’s hard to imagine Rebus being a one-off character, but that’s how Rankin, still fresh from his debut literary novel, the superbly grim The Flood, had envisaged things playing out. In fact, our hero was supposed to die at the hands of a former SAS colleague Gordon Reeve, who appears in a more benign form in the Jack Harvey novel Blood Hunt. Perhaps most significantly we also meet Samantha Rebus, who refers to the trauma she endured in this novel in A Song for the Dark Times, set some 35 years later, showing just how interconnected characters and events are in the Rebus universe.
2 Hide and Seek (1990): This book, involving the ritualistic murder of a junkie and some sexually motivated malfeasance by the upper echelons of society was Rankin’s first attempt to update Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to a modern day Edinburgh setting. It was also, apparently, the time when he actually began to like Rebus and so settled on the idea of making him the central character in his subsequent novels. A damn fine idea if you ask me.
3 Tooth and Nail (first published as Wolfman) (1992): Even though many of his early novels, especially the Jack Harvey trio, involve locations far removed from Edinburgh, this is the only Rebus book to move south of the border. We take it as read that visiting Fife (home soil), Glasgow (heaven forfend!) and the Highlands (where Sammy settles down to raise her daughter) are part and parcel of any Rebus adventure, but car chases through the West End, and I don’t mean Gorgie (yuk!), are rare in Rankin’s works. One explanation is that when he wrote this, Rankin was living in London at the time and hating it, so he brought a bit of home down to visit. It’s a bloody great, if anomalous, read and also the first book to include that familiar eminence grise Morris Gerald Cafferty.
4 Strip Jack (1992): Published later the same year, Strip Jack is an extended riff on a familiar Rankin theme. Namely, the probity, or lack thereof, of Scottish politicians, especially those who bellow loudest for independence. In this case, the MP is (relatively) innocent, while the back story is another familiar one. Rebus and his problems with women. When we met him in Knots and Crosses he was already long divorced from Rhona (mother to Sammy) and involved with DI Gill Templer, who was more than a tad career oriented (she ends up as Rebus’s boss for a while). Hence the arrival on the scene of Dr Patience Atkin; a stolid GP of inflexible beliefs whose character belies her first name. There’s no happy ever after on the horizon with this one.
5 The Black Book (1993): As is proved at the very start of The Black Book. Rebus has moved in with Dr Patience, partly because brother Michael, fresh out of nick, lands on his doorstep, with only the boxroom in Rebus's flat available as he’s rented the place out to a gang of nameless students. Out on the swally, Rebus meets an old army friend, Deek Torrance and misses dinner with Patience. She locks him out, forcing him to sleep at his place, on the sofa. At work, Rebus's colleague Brian Holmes is put into a coma after being attacked in the car park of the Elvis-themed Heartbreak Cafe. Rebus interviews Eddie Ringan, who owns the restaurant, and Pat Calder, Eddie's partner, but they prove to be of little help. Brian's girlfriend, Nell Stapleton, tells Rebus that Brian had a 'Black Book', in which he kept interesting snippets of information. She suggests that Brian was attacked because of something in it. She also feels guilty, since she had argued with Brian just before he went to the restaurant. As a result of Brian’s hospitalisation, Rebus gets to work with new recruit Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke.
Through some convoluted plot twists and errors of judgement (including buying a gun that is revealed to have been used in a murder years before), Rebus is suspended from duty for the first time in the series. This, rather like exasperated characters nipping the bridge of their nose near the tear ducts with finger and thumb, is one of the most repeated motifs in all of Rankin’s novels. Things partially clear up in the end. Rankin fools Big Ger into beating up a pathetic sex criminal, meaning he can be fully investigated while inside. Finally, Rebus accuses Nell of being the one who knocked Brian Holmes out. Although he doesn't have any evidence, he does note that she had a motive after the arguments she'd been having with Brian. A long and very satisfying read.
6 Mortal Causes (1994): Set during the Edinburgh Festival, the novel starts with a brutally executed corpse being discovered in Mary King's Close, an ancient subterranean street in the Old Town. The body has a tattoo identified with Sword and Shield, a fictional, long-defunct Scottish Nationalist group with links to sectarianism in Northern Ireland, specifically climbing into bed with the kind of deluded Orange loonies who spout on about an independent Six Counties. The victim is Big Ger's largely estranged and ultimately worthless son, and the plot moves towards the prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a tourist-filled Edinburgh. It always bothered me why Cafferty would be pals with the Red Hand lot. Seemingly, the scriptwriter for Rebus felt the same, as the sections based on this book show a couple of No Surrender types coming off worst against Big Ger, stating they should never have mixed with someone called Cafferty and Morris Gerald himself saying he feared a united Ireland as all the Prod headcases would return to Scotland and ruin his business interests.
7 Let It Bleed (1995): Named after a Rolling Stones album, though I’m not sure why, the book starts with a car chase, almost as exciting as the one in Tooth and Nail, across Edinburgh, in order to apprehend kidnappers. Sadly, it culminates with the two youths the cops are chasing throwing themselves off the Forth Road Bridge and in Rebus being injured in a car crash. Rebus's upset over this allows Rankin to show the character in a new light, revealing his isolation and potentially suicidal despair as, without work to fill in the gaps in his working hours, Rebus is basically bereft.
After the unconnected suicide of a terminally ill con, Rebus pursues an investigation that implicates respected people at the highest levels of government, and due to the politically sensitive nature of what he is doing, he faces losing his job (another suspension!), or worse, ending up inside. He is supported by his daughter Sammy, allowing their distant relationship to be built upon and him to finally extricate himself from the precarious situation.
8 Black and Blue (1997): Again, named after a Rolling Stones album, the book focuses on Rebus’s new working environment at Craigmillar Police Station, as Rankin had decided to avoid any fictional locations, to ground the Rebus series in reality, even if the events were (thankfully) imaginary. Rebus is investigating the Johnny Bible case, a spree of recent killings bearing a striking similarity to the factual Bible John case of the late 1960s. Rebus is fascinated by the killings, and studies them off-duty through old newspapers and reports.
The book switches to Bible John's viewpoint, which is a technique Rankin had explored before, but not previously in the Rebus series which, until this point, had been entirely from the cop’s point of view. If anything, this narrative device takes the novels to a higher level of plausibility as we are no longer in the grasp of an unreliable (after a few hours in The Oxford Bar) narrator. The 1960s serial killer, or a fictional representation of him, called Ryan Slocum, arrives in Scotland, apparently to pursue Johnny Bible, whom he calls the Upstart. Investigating libraries, Bible John starts tracing anyone who has researched him.
In Partick, much against his will, with CI Ancram and an old friend, DI Jack Morton, Rebus continues investigating Johnny Bible, and calls on his relationship with Cafferty, now behind bars. Because of his respect for Rebus despite his being a police officer, Cafferty arranges a meeting for him with Uncle Joe, a Glasgow gang leader. Rebus heads back home to brief Gill Templer, then visits one of his colleague's snitches, only to find him dead in the canal.
Bible John, meanwhile, has discovered that both the Upstart and Rebus have been researching him and wrestles with the idea of tipping off the police about his own findings, but decides to deal with the Upstart himself. Rebus notes his Bible John clippings have been sifted through. The reader learns that Bible John broke into Rebus's flat, looking for his business card, which he gave Rebus before learning of his work with the police. Talking to Siobhan, Rebus discovers that Johnny Bible had been using a pseudonym to research his predecessor; while Bible John closes in on the Upstart, getting closer and closer to his identity. Posing as a police officer, Bible John narrows his own list of suspects down to two.
Rebus, with Siobhan's help, determines that Johnny Bible is Martin Davidson. The police raid his house, only to find that he has been killed by Bible John. Items in the house which he took from his victims confirm that Johnny Bible was Davidson. During the party at CID afterwards, Rebus realises that Ryan Slocum and Bible John are the same person. He goes to Slocum's home, to find that he has disappeared. His wife tells Rebus that his trunk has disappeared from the loft. The reader is told the trunk was full of the ‘souvenirs’ he took from his victims. The book ends with Holmes leaving the force, and Rebus throwing out his Bible John clippings. A downbeat ending to a dramatic and gripping thriller that marks a defined gear change in Rankin’s writing style.
9
The Hanging Garden (1998):
Named after a song by The Cure, The Hanging Garden now finds
Rebus stationed at St Leonard’s. He is involved in four cases which turn out to
be intertwined. He is removed from the investigation of the murder of Mr
Taystee, an ice-cream vendor, and assigned instead to investigate Lintz, a
possible Nazi war criminal living quietly in Edinburgh. His conversations with
Lintz about guilt and responsibility cause Rebus to recall being stationed in
Belfast at the beginning of the Troubles. Rebus also volunteers to be the
liaison with Crime Squad's surveillance of up-and-coming gangster Tommy
Telford. Finally, he stumbles into the role of protector of a traumatised
Bosnian prostitute, who has associations both with Telford and with a Chechen
gangster named Tarawicz (Mr Pink Eyes) operating out of Newcastle; she leads
the police to the discovery that Japanese businessmen (one of whom turns out to
be a Yakuza member) are associated with Telford. Big Ger, still in Barlinnie,
is thought to be engineering attacks on Telford, to maintain control of crime
in Edinburgh, and Rebus and his colleagues must track the growing gang war.
Rebus's insights lead the Crime Squad to mount an operation against Telford
using Rebus's old friend Jack Morton, who is killed as the operation goes
wrong. Sammy is knocked down in what looks like a deliberate hit-and-run.
Through most of the novel, she is unconscious, with her mother Rhona and,
often, Patience (no longer involved with Rebus) at her bedside. Rebus visits
her hospital room but again and again he leaves to investigate or confront the
various gang leaders and members. Although he resists Telford's assumption that
he is part of Big Ger's team, he asks Cafferty to find the driver of the
hit-and-run, certain that someone was trying to send him a message. In the end,
this is not the case.
Critically, this is one of the most praised Rebus novels. As John Lanchester said in the London Review of Books, "The turning-point in Rankin's career came in 1997 with the publication of Black & Blue, which showed more ambition and range than earlier books in the series, interweaving an unsolved historical serial killer case with a view of the Scottish oil industry. The Hanging Garden is comparable in scope, since the "sheer range of subjects ... is one of the keys to the novel's success.” According to Allan Massie in The Scotsman, The Hanging Garden “not only "confirmed Rankin's reputation but "suggested that the categorisation of fiction into straight and crime novels is obsolete." Gill Plain points out that The Hanging Garden “intensifies Rebus's personal anguish and guilt over his failures as a soldier and a husband/lover/father, focused now on Sammy's terrible accident, while denying the character the consolations of closure, since solving the whodunnits does not really distribute guilt to the perpetrators in this novel.” Plain also points out that the Professor Lintz character, a respected citizen who probably supervised a Nazi massacre, is another example of the Jekyll and Hyde theme which Rankin had pursued through his first few Rebus novels.
10 Dead Souls (1999): The title refers both to the Joy Division song and to the 1842 Nikolai Gogol novel of the same name; quotes from the latter appear at the beginnings of the two divisions of the book. While investigating a poisoner at Edinburgh Zoo, Rebus sees Darren Rough, a known paedophile, seemingly photographing children and decides to out him, in spite of assurances that he wants to reform. Later Rebus tries to help Darren, thinking better of his action, but is unable to stop him being murdered.
Meanwhile, Rebus has been assigned to keep a watch on Cary Oakes, a convicted killer back from the US who, having served his time in prison, has come to Edinburgh to settle accounts from his past. His experience with both Rough and Oakes makes Rebus think out his prejudices and question how much a person is the product of his inherited nature, and how much nurture shapes that character. He has to confront this once again when he discovers that the reason behind the suicide of his police colleague Jim Margolies was fear that he was becoming like his incestuous father. Rebus also has to face up to his own past and the route he took to escape it when his friend Brian Mee and former girlfriend Janice approach him to help find their son Damon, who has gone missing, in the section of the book that had previously been the novella Death is not the End.
His search for answers to all his questions involves him in discovering how implicated a respected doctor had been in protecting two paedophiles then on trial for conspiring to abuse children in care homes. Darren Rough had, in fact, been brought to Edinburgh to testify against them. And while investigating Damon Mee's last appearance at a party held by Ama and Nichol Petrie, the children of a high-profile judge, he finds out that the son is a cross-dresser and had brought Damon to the party while in his female role.
Another antagonist from Rebus’ past, the journalist Jim Stevens, is attempting to make a come-back by arranging an exclusive interview with Cary Oakes. The story he gets is sheer rubbish, since Oakes is an arch-manipulator who is using Stevens as a smokescreen. Realising this, Stevens joins forces with Rebus in trying to find Oakes. When he succeeds, Oakes stabs him to death and then goes after Rebus, but underestimates him, and is kicked into the path of a speeding car. Those left alive must continue to cope with their problems. Knowing some answers does not really resolve the divisions and imperfections in society which it is the job of Rebus and his colleagues to police. It’s a very sombre book and less breakneck than the previous two novels, but an enjoyable and somewhat philosophical read.
11 Set in Darkness (2000): This is another absolute stormer. Set in December 1998, with references to the failed 1979 referendum, Rebus is on a committee for security liaison for the new Scottish Parliament, along with detectives from various Edinburgh stations. While on a tour of Queensberry House, which is to be incorporated into the new Parliament, the committee members open up an ancient fireplace and find a mummified murder victim. Investigating this case involves delving into the renovations of the building around 1979, when the victim was killed.
A Labour MSP candidate Roddy Grieve, from a wealthy and artistic Edinburgh family, including a painter mother, a brother who is a Tory MP, a sister who was a famous model when Rebus was young, and a brother who disappeared in 1979, is found murdered on the Queensberry House grounds. Grieve's murder is an important case, and it is assigned to DI Derek Linford; however, Rebus prefers his own methods. Meanwhile, Siobhan witnesses a suicide and becomes the investigating officer on that case. The suicide was a homeless man who had no history before 1980 but a great deal of money in the bank. As she and Rebus exchange information on their investigations, they find intersections that help them solve, or at least bring to a head, both the long-ago murder and the Grieve case. Big Ger has been released because he is supposedly dying of cancer. Rebus tries to learn more about the intertwining of the local mobs and real estate in the late 70s from Cafferty, but also uncovers the cancer scam and resolves to put him behind bars again.
Rankin noted in an interview that he had originally planned this novel as the first part of a trilogy following Roddy Grieve through his career in the new Scottish Parliament; however, he almost immediately decided to kill Roddy off. The rich and leisurely description of the Grieve family in chapter 3 may reflect the earlier plan to make Roddy a multi-book character. In the same interview, Rankin accepted that Rebus was approaching retirement; “I reckon I've got another five or six Rebus books, max.” Rebus retires in Exit Music; the sixth Rebus book on from Set in Darkness. However, two changes in Set in Darkness seem to prepare the reader for this eventuality. Firstly, the reemergence of Big Ger from Bar-L, where he has been since 1993. While Cafferty is not Rebus's main antagonist in every novel from now on, he remains important until his death in A Heart Full of Headstones.
Another change is the expansion of the role of Siobhan Clarke in Set in Darkness and subsequent Rebus books. Developing another police detective character allows Rankin to continue to write about Rebus's world indefinitely, though from a different perspective. From this point onwards, she is the sole or primary point-of-view character in many chapters, investigating a rape and a suicide which eventually, somewhat coincidentally, intersect with Rebus's more valued murder cases. This pattern will continue in other books, as she either works a different case from Rebus or a completely different aspect of a case. Laura Severin phrased it thus: “Rebus has an investment in a patriarchy structured around evil and good, while Clarke is already an inhabitant of a post patriarchal world more alert to social, cultural and political complexities.” Although Clarke's “post patriarchal” world does not ever fully replace Rebus's struggle with Cafferty, Set in Darkness is the first novel in which it is sketched.
12 The Falls (2001): A student vanishes, and her wealthy family of bankers relentlessly pressurise the cops who are trying to find her. Newly appointed Chief Super Gill Templer, the first female to rise so high, is trying to please her superiors and manipulate her CID officers, meaning Siobhan must decide whether to take a plum promotion or stick with the investigation alongside Rebus. The choice is an obvious one.
Two sets of clues, one nineteenth century and one twenty-first century, appear. A carved wooden doll in a coffin found near the missing woman's East Lothian home leads Rebus to the National Museum of Scotland's collection of dolls in coffins found on Arthur's Seat in 1836, after the Burke and Hare murders. Rebus also wanders into the Surgeons' Hall, where he meets several forensic pathologists of his acquaintance and sees the Burke and Hare exhibition. A museum curator, Jean Burchill, the next woman in line to try and rescue Rebus from himself, alerts him to what might be a more recent serial killer marking his exploits with such coffins. While Rebus pursues these historical angles in libraries, police archives, and museums, Siobhan interacts with an electronic trail via computer and mobile phone, showing again the clear historical and cultural differences between the two generations of police.
13 Resurrection Men (2001): Building on the ever more important theme of dinosaur policing, Rebus is required to undergo retraining at Tulliallan, the Scottish Police College, as part of a small group of senior officers whose methods need updating. They are known as the Resurrection Men, whose careers need to be resuscitated long enough for them to earn their pensions. Rebus was sent to Tulliallan for throwing a cup of tea at DCS Gill Templer, but in fact this was a staged act and he is actually working undercover on behalf of the Chief Constable to learn about a possible 1994 theft by a group of the senior officers attending the course. To complicate things further, the officers in the course are assigned the unsolved 1995 case of the murder of a Glasgow gangster, a case originally investigated by one of them and about which Rebus knows all too much. While investigating his fellow officers for a past crime, he now has to fear that they will expose his own secrets.
Back at St Leonard's, Siobhan and the other officers are investigating the brutal murder of an Edinburgh art dealer named Marber. Clues involve a stolen painting by Jack Vettriano, a large disbursement to a painter who had been claiming Marber was cheating artists and clients, and a young prostitute for whom Marber was providing a home. Siobhan suspects Big Ger of owning the spa where the prostitute works, the cab company that Marber used on the night of his death, and possibly a mysterious stash of paintings purchased from Marber a few years earlier. When the stolen painting turns up in one suspect's garden shed, he is arrested, but she remains sceptical and continues to pursue other avenues of inquiry. While Clarke turns out to be on the wrong track, and Rebus makes a mess of his undercover mission, they work as partners to discover Marber's murderer and his connection with the 1994 theft by the police officers.
14 A Question of Blood (2003): For reasons that are not made clear until the final pages of the novel, Rebus has been freshly treated for severely burned hands and is in bother. A petty criminal who had been stalking Siobhan died in a fire on the night Rebus was injured. Rebus is known to have been at the stalker's house that night but maintains that he left him unharmed and scalded his hands later at home.
An ex-soldier appears to have killed two teenagers at a private school, injured one, and shot himself. The facts seem straightforward, and the only mysteries are the motive and the origin of the gun. Rebus antagonises the survivor's father, an aggressive local MP (a familiar Rankin folk devil) who dislikes the police and is trying to make political capital out of the shooting. He also meets his long-lost cousin, whose son was one of the killer's victims and whose daughter is now being sucked into the MP's campaign. He and Clarke try to trace the gun and continue on the case when Rebus is officially suspended on suspicion of murdering Siobhan's stalker. Two secretive security service personnel appear and begin asking awkward questions, and Rebus traces their interest to the gunman's involvement in a classified military helicopter crash on Jura years before. Drugs are found on his boat, and they discover that he had secrets and some unusual friendships, including with local teenagers and an ex-RAF pilot. However, the motive for the shooting remains unclear, and Rebus begins to wonder whether they have the true version of events after all.
Forensic evidence confirms his suspicions; the MP's son turns out to be lying. He killed his fellow-students himself, driven by motives including an angry relationship with his MP father, who faces personal and political ruin because of his son's actions. With the shooting resolved, the complex web linking many of those they have been investigating becomes clear to Rebus and Clarke: there has been drug-smuggling and money-laundering, the illegal reactivation of weapons, and the theft of diamonds intended to fund a covert government deal with Irish paramilitaries. The gangster who supplies guns was involved and is found to be the real killer of Clarke's stalker, clearing Rebus of suspicion. Clarke confronts the key drug smuggler, who attacks her, escapes, and then crashes his light aircraft. A distraught Rebus witnesses the crash and assumes for a time that Clarke was on board and is dead. Thankfully, she isn’t. The case over, Rebus gets drunk. He revisits the scalding of his hands, and the reader learns that the accident happened at home during a blackout after his previous drinking bout, explaining why he has avoided alcohol during the events of the novel. Recent events make him reassess his life and relationships, and he plans to try to repair some of his broken family ties.
15 Fleshmarket Close (published in the US as Fleshmarket Alley) (2004): Despite the fabulous title and glorious jacket design, this is the nearest I felt to the sensation Rankin might just be phoning things in. As the book begins, Rebus has no desk to work from, presumably as a hint from his superiors that he should consider retirement, but he and Siobhan are still hard at it, investigating some seemingly unconnected cases. The book uses two new settings: a bleak, sink estate divided between the indigenous population and refugees (based on Wester Hailes), and a grim, socially deprived small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum seekers (based on Dungavel). The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; skeletons turn up embedded in a concrete floor; a Kurdish journalist is brutally murdered; and the son of a Glasgow gangster has moved into the Edinburgh vice scene. Predictably, all the strands intertwine, Rebus solves them (with Siobhan’s help) and walks away at the end, feeling no redemption from his actions. Just another, ordinary dispiriting day at the office.
16 The Naming of the Dead (2006): Now this one is right bang on form; one of the very best in the series. Set in July 2005, during the week of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, an underlying thread throughout the book is that of familial relationships; the book opens with Rebus attending his brother Michael’s funeral. As he was a couple of years younger than John (born in 1947 or thereabouts), it’s a sad and premature death, which effectively ends all Rebus’s ties to his native Fife. Meanwhile, Siobhan’s shaggy-haired Maoist parents arrive in Edinburgh as part of the protests, demonstrations, and scuffles that surrounded the G8 summit. Clarke had defied her parents’ ideology by becoming a police officer, but she now wants to feel like a daughter.
Rebus is nearing retirement and is sidelined until the apparent suicide of MP Ben Webster at a high-level meeting in Edinburgh Castle. It emerges that Webster was campaigning against the arms trade, and Richard Pennen of Pennen Industries, a dealer in weapons technology, comes under suspicion. At the same time, a serial killer seems to be killing former offenders, helped by a website set up by the family of a victim. Clues have been deliberately left at Clootie Well, moved from the Black Isle to Auchterarder for the purposes of the plot, a place where items of clothing are traditionally left for luck.
Siobhan is placed in charge of the investigation, although she is outranked by Rebus, and finds herself having to compromise with Big Ger, for whom one of the victims was working as a bouncer, in hunting down the riot policeman who apparently assaulted her mother at a demonstration. The new Chief Constable, James Corbyn, is keen to put any potential controversy from the investigation of these sordid crimes on hold until the focus of the world's media has moved on. He puts Rebus and Clarke under suspension when they disobey him, and they need to rely on Ellen Wylie for help.
David Steelforth, the London-based Special Branch (SO12) Commander who is overseeing the policing of the G8 summit, seems to be holding back Rebus' work at every turn. Rebus and Clarke blow the cover of one of his agents. Former preacher Councillor Gareth Tench seems to Rebus to be involved due to his apparent closeness to one of the suspects, Niddrie Ned, Keith Carberry.
Rebus and Clarke pursue their investigation daily, and sometimes hourly, against the background of the G8 summit, seen from both the police side and that of the protestors; among the events referred to are the epic and peaceful Make Poverty History march, the 7/7 London bombings, the 2012 Olympic bid and George W. Bush falling off his bicycle whilst waving at police officers, which means the whole book is not only grounded in reality, but has a total sense of a particular time and place that makes it seem, from almost 20 years distant, to be as much a historical record as a police procedural.
The title refers to: the ceremony Clarke's ageing left-wing parents attend, where the names of a sampling of the dead from the Iraq War are read out; the list of victims created by Rebus and Clarke as they try to unravel the crime; and also to John Rebus' evocation of grief in naming the many of his own friends and family who have died in the course of his life. By the end of the book, Clarke realises that she has grown closer than ever to understanding Rebus and increasingly fears that she is becoming like him, which wasn’t how she wanted to feel at the start of the novel.
17 Exit Music (2007): Named after the Radiohead song Exit Music (For a Film), the novel takes place between November 15-27, 2006. Rebus, whose last day in the Edinburgh CID is November 25, and Siobhan are investigating the death of a famous Russian exile poet who was mugged and beaten to death on King's Stables Road. Then a sound recordist with close ties to the dead Russian poet dies at home in an arson fire. Rebus discovers that the dead poet had eaten his last meal with the recordist, then had a drink with Big Ger Rebus finds Cafferty's hand in many schemes (drugs, abusive landlord practices), but the biggest ones involve real estate and are quite legitimate, even if Morris Gerald is at his most loathsome in this book.
Meanwhile, Siobhan, 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. She takes on a protégé of her own, a street cop from a family involved with petty crime, Todd Goodyear. Rebus is suspended, once more for old times’ sake, for insulting a powerful Scottish banker in the presence of the Chief Constable. He continues to pursue his hunches, often with Clarke's collusion. At one point he meets Cafferty alone; Cafferty is attacked immediately afterwards, and Rebus is carefully framed for it. On his last day on the job, however, Rebus succeeds in disentangling his suspicions and identifies the killers of the poet and the sound recordist.
Exit Music includes Rebus's retirement at the age of 60. Rankin had been looking forward to this event at least since 2000, when he commented in an interview that Rebus “lives in real time; he was 38 in Knots & Crosses and he's 52 now. He'll have to retire at 55.” Rebus in fact postponed retirement until age 60, clinging to his job, although in the two previous books, he thought frequently about his upcoming retirement. After this book, Rankin did not publish another Rebus novel for five years, though he continued to write about Edinburgh’s police, but with a new protagonist, Malcolm Fox, in The Complaints (2009) and The Impossible Dead (2011), before bringing Rebus back as a co-protagonist. In all his appearances, both solo and as part of the Rebus series, Fox is pragmatic rather than heroic, and as an investigator even more outside the brotherhood of police detectives than Siobhan.
18
Standing in Another Man's Grave (2012): I’ve recently learned that the title is a
mondegreen, apparently. Rankin misheard Jackie Leven singing Standing
in Another Man's Rain, a mistake he gives to Rebus. Excerpts from Leven's
songs appear throughout the book. As all I know of the late Jackie is Doll
by Doll’s The Palace of Love, which I still have on 7” single, I
really should investigate his works. See also Frankie Miller, John Martyn, Bert
Jansch, Matt McGinn et al.
Anyway, having been retired for five years, Rebus continues to investigate as part of the cold cases unit, as a combination of New Tricks and Waking the Dead I suppose. The mother of a missing girl enlists his help in finding out what happened to her daughter, leading Rebus to uncover the truth about a series of seemingly unconnected disappearances. Despite now being a civilian, he is seconded to CID, where the most recent case is being handled by Siobhan and her unit. The serial killer has found his victims on the A9 highway and Rebus travels to Pitlochry and Inverness several times, driving as far north as his daughter Samantha's home.
In Edinburgh, Rebus continues to associate with Big Ger and meets two younger gangsters who are related to the missing girl. His activities are known to Malcolm, who believes that he can take Rebus down for corruption. However, the constant reorganization of the Scottish police structures mean that Rebus loses his official position by the end of the novel in any case.
19 Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013): Like Standing in Another Man’s Grave, the title is taken from a Jackie Leven song. The novel takes place in February and March 2013 against the background of the dissolution of regional police forces as they are merged into the monolithic Police Scotland. Malcolm Fox’s role is disappearing, and he undertakes an investigation on behalf of the Solicitor General in the hopes of finding a place in the new organization. Siobhan C is stationed at Gayfield Square but follows important cases to Torphichen and Wester Hailes police stations. Incredibly, Rebus has bounced back from losing his civilian role with the Cold Cases Unit and has rejoined succeeded CID, albeit as a Detective Sergeant instead of a Detective Inspector. He works with both Clarke and Fox but is primarily investigating issues relating to a long-defunct police station, Summerhall, where he was assigned in 1982 as a newly minted detective.
Also relevant to the cases is the upcoming 2014 Scottish independence referendum; a Justice Minister, whose death Clarke is investigating, is a figurehead for the Yes campaign, while Rebus’s Summerhall colleague Gilmour, Fox’s target, is a prominent No supporter. This recalls Set in Darkness, which took place in the midst of the first elections to the new Scottish Parliament. Clarke and Rebus’s apparently trivial investigation of a university student’s car crash becomes complicated when the student’s boyfriend’s father, the Justice Minister, is found dead in his own home. Meanwhile, Rebus is invited by Fox to help with the opening of a very cold case involving the Summerhall policemen, who called themselves Saints of the Shadow Bible. This recalls the short story Dead and Buried, published in The Beat Goes On and set during Rebus’s stint at Summerhall. DI Stefan Gilmour tests Rebus by allowing him to investigate a watch buried with a man named Joseph Blay, who was hanged for murder in 1963. Rebus finds that Gilmour's dead hero, DI Charlie Cruikshank, had suppressed evidence that could have exonerated Blay. But Rebus tells Gilmour that he will not take the matter to "The Complaints" as "what good would that do?". Gilmour says "Welcome to the Saints of the Shadow Bible, John" and after a moment's hesitation Rebus returns his handshake.
The surviving Saints want Rebus to ensure that Fox does not disrupt their lives, while Fox hopes Rebus will implicate himself and Rebus wants to find out more about the secrets, he only glimpsed thirty years earlier. Rebus ends up using his confrontational techniques (intimidation and threats, recruiting snitches, bargaining with gangsters) to assist both Clarke and Fox. The three detectives come to respect each other, which sets the agenda for the rest of the Rebus series.
20 Even Dogs in the Wild (2015): The title for this one comes from a song of the same name by The Associates from their album The Affectionate Punch. A former Scottish senior prosecutor has been found dead, with a threatening note in his pocket. Siobhan is in charge of the high-profile case. Then Big Ger receives a similar note, and someone shoots at him. Rebus, pushing 70, has retired for the second time, but is asked to join in the investigation. Meanwhile Malcolm is drafted into a surveillance team monitoring a group of Glaswegian gangsters who look set to move on Edinburgh. Cafferty, the young Edinburgh gangster Darryl Christie, and the Glasgow gang are all looking over their shoulders at each other and at the police. Cafferty is the one who recognises the history behind the vendetta against him and a few other survivors of a disastrous event thirty years earlier. Perhaps aware of the need to keep onside with everyone else, Ger has taken to referring to Rebus as John rather than Straw Man. Equally strangely, Rebus has become the owner of a stray dog, Brillo, that latched onto him outside Big Ger’s house.
21 Rather Be the Devil (2016): As well as a dog, Rebus has also come into possession of a new lady friend; Dr Debra Quant, a forensic pathologist. The novel opens and closes with them dining in a restaurant which is part of the Waldorf Caledonian Hotel. The explanation for the modest and abstemious meal is Rebus's diagnosis of COPD and a shadow on his lung, which leads to him quitting cigarettes and moderating his alcohol intake. However, his mind is still razor sharp and Rebus is reminded of an unsolved murder at this hotel, dating back to 1978; an unsolved case in which Edinburgh bankers and pop stars were suspects. Rebus revisits the case, which becomes intertwined with others more actively pursued by the police in the coming week.
Malcolm has been promoted to a desk job at Gartcosh where Police Scotland have the Scottish Crime Campus. Meanwhile, Siobhan is investigating the mugging of Darryl Christie, a young gangster who, in Standing in Another Man's Grave, stepped into the void created by Big Ger's semi-retirement. Because HMRC are interested in a shell companies scheme involving Christie and banking scion Anthony Brough, Fox is sent back to Edinburgh to join Clarke's investigation. Then a retired policeman dies, drowned with his hands bound, shortly after talking to Rebus about the unsolved case. This brings a Gartcosh Murder Inquiry Team to Edinburgh, and Fox is asked to join them. Rebus manages to follow both enquiries, and Fox sees to it that Siobhan comes to the attention of the Gartcosh group, and so the three are again working together. Sadly, the title comes from a John Martyn song and not part of the lyrics of Creeping to the Cross by That Petrol Emotion.
22 In a House of Lies (2018): This one isn’t from Einstürzende Neubauten either, alas. Inspired by the murder of Daniel Morgan by rogue members of the Metropolitan Police, the book begins when some boys discover a car with a long-dead body in the boot, in a woodland which has been the subject of a real-estate dispute. Rebus, now suffering badly from COPD, having given up cigarettes and almost stopped drinking, worked the 2006 missing-persons case in the months before his original retirement. This is case widely agreed to have been badly handled. Rebus himself had tried to protect from publicity the missing man's lover, son of a detective inspector in the old Strathclyde Police, and had also been hoping to tie in Big Ger. The murder inquiry now is handled by a team from Police Scotland, but Siobhan and Malcolm are included. Clarke has recently been investigated by a corrupt pair of Anti-Corruption Unit cops for leaking information to a reporter, and she is being harassed by a mysterious person over a recent case which in fact she handled well. Rebus, at her request, re-investigates that case; he tangles with the ACU team, and hopes again to see Cafferty connected to the body-in-the-boot murder. It seems that, in the absence of family, job, hobbies or love interest, all that motivates Rebus to keep going is a desire to finally nail Big Ger.
23 A Song for the Dark Times (2020): This was the final one in the series I read, having devoured A Heart Full of Headstones back in early January. This is a desperately sad novel, with 75-year-old Rebus and 45-year-old Sammy thrown back together in terrible circumstances, following the murder of Sammy’s semi-estranged partner Keith. We’ve not met Keith before and, you know, I’m sorry we didn’t get to know him, as he seemed to have some interesting character traits. In the Prologue, Rebus moves down two flights of stairs to the ground-floor flat in the same Arden Street tenement, with a lot of help from Siobhan. His first morning in the new flat, he gets a call from his daughter Samantha saying her partner is missing.
Rebus immediately makes the long drive to the (fictional) village of Naver near Tongue in the extreme north of Scotland. He finds Keith’s body. In trying to discover why he was murdered, he gets to know his granddaughter’s father for the first time; Keith had been obsessed with the history of a nearby World War II prison camp, some of whose survivors settled locally and are still alive. The local police see Samantha as the obvious suspect in Keith’s murder. While Rebus can’t help considering this possibility, he frantically researches other options. Samantha is devastated and blames it all on him.
In Edinburgh, Siobhan and Malcolm are part of the Murder Inquiry Team looking into the mysterious killing of a Saudi student. This takes them into the world of wealthy international socialites and their financial projects. The dead man’s closest friend was a young Scottish aristocrat whose family trust owns most of the area around Tongue, so Rebus’s investigations overlap with Siobhan’s. Big Ger is the fourth point-of-view character. He now runs an exclusive club where he films the guests to obtain blackmail material, and he involves Fox in one of his blackmail projects. Though Fox plays along, Cafferty’s attempt to control him and his Police Scotland boss ultimately fails. At the end of the novel, a young thug with a gun, who Ger had earlier given a good kicking, is on his way to see Cafferty.
24 A Heart Full of Headstones (2022): The title comes from the song Single Father by Jackie Leven, four lines of which are quoted on the last page of the novel, which is set during the period when COVID-19 is a threat, but lockdown has ended, so probably in 2022. The novel is bookended by a prologue and epilogue both titled simply Now. In these, Rebus is on trial for a crime he commits at the end of Then, which incorporates the main narrative (divided into 8 days), which takes place not long before whereby Rebus, Siobhan and Malcolm all pursue their own investigations, though the cases come together around a policeman named Francis Haggard, stationed at Tynecastle in Edinburgh. The three of them frequently exchange information or ask each other for help. Clarke is at first working on the criminal aspect of Haggard's domestic abuse of his wife, which has resulted in their separation; Clarke interviews the wife, Cheryl, and her sister Stephanie Pelham, who has taken Cheryl in. Haggard is threatening to reveal the police corruption at Tynecastle unless the case is dropped. Then Haggard is murdered, and Police Scotland sets up a Major Inquiry Team (MIT) which includes both Clarke and Fox who, in his time in the Complaints had wanted badly to convict a Tynecastle cop, Sergeant Alan Fleck, now retired. In Fleck's day, Rebus had helped him, giving him tips and setting up a meeting with Big Ger. Fox's concerns push Rebus to recall how he tried both to fit in and to keep his integrity when dealing with Tynecastle. On the MIT, Fox represents the official concern with the old cases that Haggard, but also Fleck, are bringing up. Fox also represents other interests of Gartcosh, the administrative campus of Police Scotland, including possible links with smuggling of cars for Fleck's dealership and of drugs.
While Malcolm keeps his conscience clean by obeying the rules,
Siobhan understands that Rebus's rule-breaking is usually in the interests of
justice. As a woman, she could never be part of the privileged fraternity of
old-fashioned policing, herself, but she accepts that sometimes the methods can
be used to good ends. She is dismayed and sceptical when Francis Haggard claims
that his wife-beating was a result of PTSD, caused by his years as a policeman
and his participation in the culture of corruption, bullying, violence, and
misogyny at Tynecastle station. As fervent supporters of James Connolly’s team,
both Siobhan and I recognise the meaning implicit in such a location.
Rebus,
meanwhile, has been assigned by Big Ger, whose criminal empire has crumbled, to
look for a man named Jack Oram, supposedly so that Cafferty can apologize to
him. This turns out to be a careful ploy to get Rebus to stir up trouble for
the Mackenzie family: Fraser and Beth, an old flame of Ger, and their daughter
Gaby, who owns a nightclub. They have taken over some of Cafferty's old
businesses, including apartment rentals and drugs. Haggard was killed in an
apartment rented to him by the Mackenzies, so they are also coming to the
attention of the MIT. Jack Oram's son Tommy is working for the Mackenzies, and
Rebus becomes somewhat friendly with him. Rebus pursues the various leads he
turns up, though he doubts Jack Oram is still alive and he is more interested
in what Cafferty is trying to accomplish. Clarke and Fox, along with the rest
of the MIT, gradually trace Haggard's last day, using phone records, CCTV
footage, and file boxes full of old investigations of the Tynecastle police
station. Clarke is successful in identifying the murderer, and Fox informally
promises her a promotion to DCI. Rebus, however, tries to pursue his
investigation with a crowbar, and it does not end well for Big Ger, or Rebus.
Rankin has said that the story was inspired by several instances of police violence or misbehaviour, such as the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard, prompting him to devise a plot in which Rebus tries to clear his name as a bad cop, but Rebus was a bad cop as he was part of the culture that produces bad cops.” This is not the first novel where Rebus has an opportunity to think with regret about situations where he made mistakes; he recalls difficult past cases in Black and Blue, Resurrection Men and Saints of the Shadow Bible. As in those novels, Rebus both fears exposure of past misdeeds and examines his own motives at the time, trying to ascertain whether, in breaking the rules, he also crossed the moral lines he had drawn for himself. In this case, though, he is looking back specifically at situations in which Cafferty manipulated, when he was seen, as he still is by many, as the gangster's puppet. This can no longer be the case and Rebus is looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars as a result.
Rebus’s Scotland; A Personal Journey (2005): This is certainly no tourist handbook. Rather, it is an evocative ramble, illustrated by some fine photographs, round the places that made Rebus the man he is, and Ian Rankin too for that matter. A particularly enjoyable thing about Rebus is that Rankin has not made him a glib proselytiser for the cause of Scottish Independence. He voted NO in 1979 and undoubtedly did so again in 2014, if you take cognisance of his endless grumbles about the cost of the new Parliament. And don’t get on to the subject of Edinburgh’s trams, if you know what is good for you. To love Scotland does not necessarily mean you should allow the SNP and their desire to destroy working class unity by cuddling up to the Capitalist elite, to break the bonds forged in the Trade Unions and Labour movement. Rebus would be appalled at the presence of illegally obtained motor homes in Dunfermline (oft known as Vichy Fife), the defenestration of drug dealers in Hilltown or John Swinney’s treasonous tirade against the English. Well, at least it wasn’t against Argentina like Steve Clarke’s resignation speech.
The Beat Goes On; Collected Short Stories (2014): This includes the novella Death is not the End (1998) that is the central plot strand to Dead Souls (1999). It’s brilliant, but then again so are many of the companion pieces here; brief vignettes that provide a window into the soul of our Detective Inspector, which is possibly why I fell for the whole series. These short stories, along with so many other details (his record collection, his need for a pint and whenever possible, especially on work time, the hassles with women and his eventual companion Brillo the dog) are what makes the world of John Rebus all so real. Not to mention the weather, which is always brutal, whatever the season.
Long Shadows; Stage Play (2018): I’ve not seen either of the two Rebus stage plays, but I’ve read them and what pleases me is that they are both new stories. Long Shadows actually starred Charles Lawson, aka Jim MacDonald from Coronation Street, as Rebus. No doubt this would have made the untrammelled enmity towards Morris Gerald Cafferty rather authentic.
A Game Called Malice; Stage Play (2023): At the time of writing, this is the latest Rebus product to be published. A very engaging slice of bourgeois zeitgeist, with Rebus and a few pals at a dinner party, where the hostess introduces a game of murder mystery to entertain her guests. Rebus, of course, is the one who works things out. I’m not a great theatre lover, but I’d go to this, if it ever toured.
Finally…
25. Midnight and Blue (2024): It’s not out until October and I can hardly wait. You see, I’m really missing being inside the heads of Rebus, Siobhan and Malcolm. Ian Rankin is such a superb writer that he has made these fictional characters real for me and it feels like I’ve been living in Edinburgh for the last 6 months alongside them.
