Tag Archives: Ian Rankin

The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin

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This is the second Malcolm Fox book and he’s still a detective in The Complaints department which is based in Fettes Avenue in Edinburgh, they investigate any police officers who are suspected of being up to no good. Along with his colleagues Naysmith and Kaye, Fox travels to the police station at Kirkcaldy in Fife so that they can interview police officers who have been implicated in a recent court case which has resulted in the conviction of a detective at the Kirkcaldy police station.

That happens to be my local ‘cop shop’ and most of the action in this book takes place within a short distance of where I live, and of course as Ian Rankin is almost a local lad, being brought up in another nearby Fife town, it’s an area which he knows very well. It was quite strange but at the same time a wee bit thrilling to recognise all the shops, tea shops and housing estates which they frequented, if you know the area you’ll even recognise particular lay bys! I must say that Rankin portrayed the town exactly as it is.

I think I enjoyed this one even more than the first one in this series, (The Complaints) although how much that is because of the local interest I can’t say.

In this one Fox has to dig back in newspaper archives to discover why a retired policeman had been investigating the death of a prominent Scottish politician in 1985. Was it suicide or did MI5 have something to do with it?

There certainly were some things going on in the 1980s, a few Scottish so called terrorists did rear their ugly heads. The rest of us were quite mystified why anyone should want to be extreme and violent. It didn’t amount to much anyway and I recall that the biggest incident was when a ‘bomb’ had been left on the railway track close to my then local railway station. People were not chuffed at the trains to Glasgow being delayed, me included. It turned out that the perpetrators were a couple of local numpties that I knew, from a distance. They were jailed for several years for their efforts.

Of course, Ian Rankin’s book is a work of fiction but it does sort of imply that there was a problem with terrorism in Scotland in the past – and really there never was such a problem. The thing in Scotland, particularly the west, has always been the religious bigotry. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to be nearly as bad as it used to be as fewer parents send their children to faith schools, where they used to be taught that they were different (superior) to the children at ordinary state schools. Tony Blair was keen on allowing more faith schools and unfortunately the Conservative Party is now all for religious schools too. In fact they really want schools which are staffed by low paid ‘teachers’ with no qualifications. Fools!

The Complaints by Ian Rankin

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It seems like absolutely no time since I was in the kitchen listening to an interview with Ian Rankin on the radio. So it was a wee bit of a shock to me to realise that it must have been a 2009 interview, as the book he was plugging at the time was The Complaints, the first in a new series. The next thing I heard was that he was bringing back Rebus in his most recently published book and that it’s also his third Malcolm Fox book. I thought I’d better start reading the Malcolm Fox series before it gets out of hand and he has written 20 of them.

I managed to borrow the Complaints from the library. It’s set mainly in Edinburgh, as you would expect and Malcolm Fox is the main character. He’s a detective working in the Complaints section of the Lothian Police, they investigate other policemen and are deeply despised by all of their so-called colleagues. Fox is described as a bear of a man, although he has lost weight recently and he is also a recovering alcoholic. He’s not exactly popular, even amongst the other Complaints and Conduct detectives.

I really didn’t feel that I was enjoying this book until I was almost half way into it, I think that was mainly because I was missing Rebus and I kept imagining Fox as the Rebus character but eventually I got over that and I ended up enjoying The Complaints more than the Rebus books, mind you, I think I’ve only read about four of those.

The action takes place over just 17 days in 2009. Malcolm Fox has been told to investigate Jamie Breck, a young detective who has been ear-marked for fast-tracking to the top. There’s plenty going on in and around Edinburgh, murders and disappearances, dodgy business dealings and corrupt council officials and nobody knows who they can trust. It’s difficult to figure out who are the good guys and there are plenty of twists and turns in this book, I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the Fox series.

It’s easy to see that the nefarious goings-on of Edinburgh Council give Ian Rankin loads of copy!

Edinburgh

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The weekend turned out to be very busy for us and we even ended up having to go to Edinburgh on Sunday to take a coat back to a shop there. I’d left it too long to stick it in the post after ordering it on-line, I’ve never bought clothes that way before. Remind me not to do it again because it turned out to be nothing like I had expected it to look. Why are they so sparse with the descriptions?

Anyway, Sunday turned out to be a good day to go to the shops in Edinburgh because it wasn’t very busy at all and we were able to have a bit of a wander and take a lot of photographs. The street above is Cockburn Street (it’s pronounced Co-burn) which is usually very crowded with students and youngsters, but they were obviously all still in bed at this time. The photo doesn’t really give you the idea of how steep it is. It’s mentioned quite a lot in Ian Rankin’s books.

These ones are of The Royal Mile (High Street) – up and down, bin bags and all.

I like the fairy-tale quality of these very old buildings which are near the castle.

But if I won millions on the lottery I wouldn’t mind buying one of these Georgian ones in the New Town.

We had a look in the shops but didn’t buy anything, really if you’re looking for something in particular then you are unlikely to find it in Edinburgh. There are so few shops there because it’s tiny compared with Glasgow, which is the best place for shopping in Scotland.

Ian Rankin’s Reichenbach Falls

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Late last night I watched Reichenbach Falls which had apparently been on before but I had missed it. At first I thought this was going to be another Rebus investigation but it was far more convoluted than anything in the Rebus series. I really enjoyed it and it wasn’t just a bog-standard crime investigation. I suppose it is a dark tale, but it also shows the beautiful architecture and scenery around Edinburgh, and the film can be enjoyed for that aspect alone. I think it will be of interest to anyone thinking of going there for a visit.

The film maker has really shown what I think of as the hidden Edinburgh at the Water of Leith and St Bernard’s Well, which I didn’t even know existed until recently. At times it was like an advert for Tourism Scotland and was very easy on the eyes. It did go from ‘the sublime to the cor blimey’ but that’s the old Scottish split personality, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde thing.

Rankin threw in plenty of other Scottish writers one way or another and Richard Wilson played the part of Arthur Conan Doyle.

I’m hoping that the above link is available for people outside the UK to view. Otherwise it might be available on Netflix.

The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin

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This book was first published in 1998. I must say that I didn’t enjoy this one as much as Let It Bleed. It’s a very personal storyline for DI John Rebus with his daughter being knocked down in a hit and run incident. Is it his fault given that he is involved with gangland warfare on the streets of Edinburgh?

There is also the possibility that a WWII Nazi war criminal is living in Rebus’s patch. Coupled with the fact that there are also foreign gang members from Japan and Chechnia and a young woman who is being forced to work as a prostitute in the mix too – there’s definitely a lot going on.

But somehow this one wasn’t a page turner for me although I did carry on to the end. I think I’m going to give Rebus a bit of a rest for the moment and my bedtime read is going to be Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke, which is supposed to be her best.

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin

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The blurb on the back of this book says: Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer – who just might lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he’s doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow’s Mr Big.

I enjoyed this one too, it takes us away from Edinburgh which is Rebus’s comfort zone and has him travelling over to Glasgow and up to Aberdeen and even over to Shetland and on to an oil rig. The storyline involves the oil industry and a murderer who is going by the name of Johnny Bible, a copycat killer who is styling himself on Bible John who was a real murderer in the Glasgow area in the late 1960s. He was never caught and just ‘disappeared’ making most people believe that he had died.

Black and Blue was published in 1997 and Ian Rankin couldn’t have known that nearly 20 years later a murderer called Peter Tobin was going to kill a young Polish woman whom he knew through their Roman Catholic church – he buried her under the church floor and during the police investigations they realised that he had links to areas where young women had disapperared. Men in their 70s don’t suddenly begin a career in murder.

Tobin had moved to England and had lived at numerous locations, in the garden of one house they found the body of a Scottish teenager who had been abducted from a bus station 20 odd years before. Tobin still had a distinctive bracelet which she had worn and her father was able to identify, and what is even scarier is that Tobin apparently had lots of pieces of women’s jewellery, but he isn’t saying who it all belonged to. The body of another young woman was found at another house he had once lived in and he has been convicted of those murders too. However he claims to have killed 48 women, but won’t give any details. But there is one woman who miraculously survived a Bible John attack, and having seen photographs of Tobin which were taken in the 1960s – she is sure that Tobin is the man who attacked her and left her for dead.

The police photofit picture of Bible John was in every train when I was a 10-12 year old and it was very similar to photographs of Tobin so it would seem that Bible John didn’t die but just carried on killing in different places until he was caught by the Glasgow police as an old man.

So back to the book, Black and Blue was just a bit strange because of the recent developments in the Bible John case and also the fact that Rebus goes ‘on the wagon’ towards the end of the book and starts drinking orange juice, so no Irn Bru was required by me!

Just William by Richmal Crompton

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This book was perfect bed time reading when we got in from crazy jaunts across the country in the snow. William is a lovable character just 11 yers old and up to all sorts of naughtiness from a more innocent era. It was first published in 1922.

Chapter XI begins:
‘She’s – she’s a real Botticelli,’ said the young man dreamily, as he watched the figure of William’s sister, Ethel disappearing into the distance.
William glared at him.
‘Bottled cherry yourself,’ he said indignantly. ‘She can’t help having red hair, can she?

I know, I know – it’s daft, but just what I needed.

Thanks again to Niranjana (Brown Paper) for pointing me in the direction of Richmal Crompton.

If you slide your gaze over to my Library Thing thingmyjig on the right, you’ll see that I’ve started reading Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue. I thought I would probably go back to the beginning of the Rebus series but decided to start on this one as it’s in an omnibus edition of three which I’ve borrowed from the library. When I’ve finished with those ones I’ll start at the beginning.

What I’m really supposed to be doing at the moment is reading War and Peace and I can’t avoid it any longer so I’m planning to start that tomorrow, during the day time, I don’t think it’s bed time reading, somehow.

Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin

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This is the second Rebus book by Ian Rankin which I’ve read and I’m sure I’ll be reading quite a few more of them. To be truthful, my heart did sink just a wee bit at the beginning because for a minute it seemed a bit purple prose-ish but he soon settled down into a more relaxed style.

I don’t want to say too much about the storyline because I know that quite a few people are reading Let it Bleed. Judith (Reader in the Wilderness) and her Ken have been enjoying it. Suffice to say that Rebus is the passenger in a police car on the Forth Road Bridge on a freezing winter night. He and his colleague are chasing a Ford Cortina which might have the Lord Provost’s daughter in its boot. The Ford is heading for Fife and they are determined to stop it from reaching there because they want the ‘collar’.

But that’s just the beginning and big business and politics play their parts in this book too.

I get completely engrossed in good books and at one point Rebus was doing a helluva amount of hard drinking and I actually found myself thinking – Thank God I’ve got a bottle of Irn Bru in the pantry – which is a well known Scottish fizzy drink, famous as a hangover cure!

I can’t think of anything particularly ‘Scottish’ which would have to be explained to anyone, but I have heard some English people prononunce the Irish name Siobhan (Rebus’s sidekick) as – See o ban- when of course it should be Shivon.

I hope that you’re reading this, Joan Kyler of Pennsylvania, whose name always comes with a soundtrack in my head – (65-0-0-0) because you might like to see if you can borrow this one from your library, especially as it features that ‘scary bridge’ which you drove over some years ago.

I think Ian Rankin is particularly good at conveying just how cold it feels in the east of Scotland during the winter. It’s the wind chill that gets you and as he says sandblasts you, so it’s always a lot colder than the thermometer says.

This is one of my favourite Irn Bru adverts. Have a look if you want a laugh.

Willa Cather and others

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I’m going to start reading Willa Cather’s Death of the Archbishop soon, so I was really chuffed when I paid a call on Christopher at ProSe last night and discovered that his new post was about his recent visit to Nebraska and Red Cloud, where Willa lived. His photographs are lovely and the houses are perfectly American, picket fence and all.

So if you’ve missed it, do yourself a favour and have a peek now. One of the houses featured is linked with the book My Antonia and is in need of some TLC apparently as is Robert Louis Stevenson’s home in Edinburgh, which you can see here. It really annoys me when literary history is just left to rot like this.

On the reading front, I’ve just finished Ian Rankin’s Let It Bleed. Does anybody else want to join in with the discussion on this book over at Judith’s ? (Reader in the Wilderness) I’m usually more of a vintage crime lass but I think I’m really going to get into the Rebus books.

I’m now nearly half way through Dracula and I’m really surprised at how much I’m enjoying it. Last night I decided to read War and Peace, I’ve been putting it off for years and the only way of doing it is to have a deadline, I think I have to finish it by January the 19th when there is going to be a discussion on it.

Last but not least, The Classics Circuit has started up again after a bit of a rest and the next tour is a Trollope one. I’ve signed up to read either The Belton Estate or The Claverings, which happen to be the only two of his which I have in the house but haven’t read yet.

I mustn’t forget Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers either.

Help!!!!

Library Loot

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I had a ‘phone call from the library yesterday to let me know that the Willa Cather book that I had requested was waiting for me, so I sauntered up there in the afternoon and of course I had to take out just a few books more. I ended up coming home with these:

An omnibus by Ian Rankin containing Let it Bleed, Black and Blue and The Hanging Garden. Judith, Reader in the Wilderness is planning to read Let it Bleed, and we’re intending to have a bit of a chat about it.

The Willa Cather book is Death Comes for the Archbishop – lots of people have recommended this one.

A Persephone book by Winifred Watson called Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. This will be my first Persephone read. According to the sticker on the book this is now a major film, but I haven’t seen it.

And because it’s coming up for Hallowe’en and lots of people have enjoyed it, particularly Stefanie, So Many Books and Jane GS, (Reading,Writing,Working,Playing), I decided to take out Dracula. I really hate the blood spattered cover but it’s about time that I got around to reading it and I’m hopeful that it’s going to be a lot better than The Seven Jewels by Stoker.