Auld Reekie (Ian Rankin in general)

Member Name: merv

Product:	Ian Rankin in general
Date:	02/11/01 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent characterisation, fast moving, complex but beleivable plots

Disadvantages: TV series

Edinburgh is one of the most atmospheric places I’ve ever visited. Once the darkness arrives the old town reeks of intrigue, the buildings with their thick stone walls seem to have absorbed the history of the city and every nook and cranny appears to have a secret. And it is that atmosphere which first attracted me to Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels.

It is no coincidence that in the best crime novels the places where they are situated are as much a character in the novels as the detectives? Think of Morse and you automatically think of Oxford, Sherlock Holmes and the cobbled streets of Whitechapel spring to mind, Agatha Christie and its usually a charming village in the Cotswolds.

The same applies to Ian Rankin. Edinburgh and John Rebus take equal billing in these powerful and fast moving novels.

Edinburgh is the home town of both the novelist and the hero, and in his novels Ian Rankin paints a tremendously atmospheric portrait of the city with gritty realism, very much in the same way as Dickens wrote about London. Anyone whose been to Edinburgh will soon recognize the type of bars and attractions he’s writing about and those who haven’t will gain a mental picture which will make them want to visit the city.

The Scottish capital is a perfect setting for crime writing in that it has a split personality - on the one hand it is the ‘city of history and museums and royalty’, but at the same time there is this feeling that ‘behind the thick walls of those Georgian townhouses there are all sorts of terrible things happening.' In fact the purpose of the early Rebus novels was to show a side of Edinburgh that would be new and surprising, shocking even to most people.

John Rebus is the detective, Edinburgh through and through. Always flouting the rules and getting into trouble with his bosses, they give on him the cases other officers aren’t interested in to keep him out of har
m’s way. But these are exactly the kinds of cases Rebus enjoys.

Through the novels, you learn over a period of time that Rebus is a failure as both a husband and a father, addicted to alchol and cigarettes, he operates on an extremely short fuse. He has chosen to become a loner and has absorbed himself in his work and other peoples’ disasters, in order to get away from his own.

Rebus knows Edinburgh - and not just the city the tourist or casual visitor sees. He knows the underbelly of the city, ‘its seething emotions and jealousies, the intrigues that are kept behind thick stone walls and shuttered windows’. As a detective, he has access to the high life and the low, and that’s the theme of his cases - the two lives intertwine.

One of the main strengths of the novels aside from the excellent characterization and complex but believable plots is that they are about contemporary Scotland - from the Scottish parliament and political corruption to the oil industry and Silicon glen - real issues that are happening now.

Don’t be put off by the TV series, as a programme it isn’t bad, but its not a patch on the books, and John Hannah is nothing like John Rebus is described in the books or as I imagined.

Ian Rankin is in my opinion the best of the modern crime writers and Ian Rebus the most complex and interesting of the current crop of detectives. Give the books a try, you won’t be disappointed.

Summary: