Rebus returns to his old tricks

Declan Burkereviews Standing in Another Man's Grave, By Ian Rankin, Orion, 458pp, £18.99

Lee Child recently noted that, were he to die, his fans would mourn and quickly move on. Were he to kill off Jack Reacher, on the other hand, the result would be uproar.

It’s an echo of Arthur Conan Doyle’s experience when he was forced to resurrect Sherlock Holmes after that character’s apparently fatal plunge into the Reichenbach Falls. One of the strengths of the crime and mystery genre is that it encourages the development of a character over a series of novels, to the point where the reader comes to identify more with the hero than with his or her creator.

Thus Max Allan Collins can write “new” Mickey Spillane novels, and John Banville’s alter ego, Benjamin Black, can next year take the baton from Robert B Parker in writing about Raymond Chandler’s iconic private eye, Philip Marlowe.

Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh-based Insp John Rebus is equally iconic. Indeed, he is archetypal in his dour contempt for authority, his solitary nature, his fidelity to old-school policing methods and his fondness for the demon drink. Rankin didn’t exactly kill off Rebus at the end of Exit Music, the 17th novel in the series, from 2007, which was flagged at the time as the final Rebus novel. With his customary fidelity to the realities of Rebus’s experiences, Rankin put the inspector out to pasture, because a police detective of his age in Scotland would have reached retirement age.

Rebus requires no melodramatic resurrection for Standing in Another Man’s Grave, then, but it is notable that he is working, in a civilian capacity, in a cold-case department as the story begins.

Approached by a woman whose daughter disappeared many years earlier on the A9 dual carriageway, and who is convinced that the recent disappearance of another girl on the same route represents the latest in a series of abductions, Rebus agrees to persuade his former subordinate Siobhan Clarke to take the case to her current boss.

Meanwhile, with revised retirement legislation in place, Rebus is angling for a return to professional duties with the CID. His reputation should be sufficient to secure his place, but Rebus is under investigation by Malcolm Fox of Edinburgh’s internal-affairs department, which is probing his habit of consorting with known criminals and, in particular, Rebus’s old nemesis, Ger Cafferty.

With these twin hooks Rankin draws us into a thematically rich plot that evolves into a meditation on mortality and how best to assess a man’s worth. (The novel’s title is adapted from a song by Jackie Leven, a Scottish singer-songwriter with whom Rankin collaborated, and who died in 2011.)

A last tilt at the windmills

There’s a certain poignancy to the novel’s opening, as Rebus, one of the most popular fictional characters of our generation, fumbles through the ashes of various cold cases and then proceeds to pursue an investigation largely on his own initiative, all on the basis that his previous dedication to the job has left him solitary and, in his own eyes, irrelevant in his retirement.

Painfully aware of his limitations and his diminishing physical capability, Rebus rouses himself – much as he cajoles his battered old Audi into life every morning – for one last tilt at the windmills. He is convinced that the CID’s new and “improved” policing methods lack the hands-on quality that requires police officers to get said hands dirty, to engage with the criminals and barter away some of their soul, if that’s what it takes to bring a killer to justice.

In that sense the novel is a commentary of sorts on the kind of crime and mystery narrative that has come to dominate popular culture in recent decades: the bright, shiny and utterly implausible CSI series and its multitude of spinoffs. Despite the best efforts of his young, social-media-friendly colleagues, Rebus remains wedded to the old methods, just as Rankin eschews the easy options, plotwise, to concentrate on his fascination with the character of Rebus and how this previously immovable object is contending with the irresistible forces of aging and death.

It’s a compelling tale, although fans of the Malcolm Fox stories – the internal-affairs man has appeared in two novels published by Rankin subsequent to Rebus’s retirement, The Complaints (2009) and The Impossible Dead (2011) – may be taken aback by Rankin’s portrayal of Fox here. To date an entertainingly flawed character who appreciates that his peers are entitled to consider that his investigations of his colleagues are a treachery of sorts, Fox is here rather one-dimensional, a petty jobsworth determined that Rebus be exposed as tainted due to his complex relationship with the criminal fraternity.

Perhaps Rankin is burning his bridges with Fox in preparation for more Rebus novels to come. If so, it’s a pity – but then, with Rebus, the ends always justify the means.