Farmer
Watson has decided to keep Detective Inspector John Rebus out of trouble by
assigning him to a committee concerned with the new Scottish Parliament's
security. Rebus inspects the building work at Queensbury House with his
colleagues, including fast-tracker Derek Linford. However, Rebus
seems to attract trouble, and it's not long before a body is discovered...
I've only read
the one Rebus novel before, The Hanging Garden, and in that earlier
composition, Rebus seemed to work much more on his own. Set in Darkness is
a more of an ensemble piece, and seems to hail from the tradition of the police
procedural. Rebus's colleagues are very much in the
limelight, featuring Linford's flirtation with Siobhan Clarke, and the
'Time Team' of Wylie and Hood. There are just as many coincidences as
you'd expect to find in three editions of TV's 'The Bill' (where the two crimes
per episode are always inextricably linked). This is probably related to
the Kevin Bacon game, the 'six degrees of separation' (where everyone on the
planet has contact with everyone else), mentioned in the
novel. Rankin concentrates on the smaller universe consisting of
Edinburgh, and this is more than enough. Indeed, so flourished is this
novel with characters, that if you put the narrative down, you're bound to be
really confused when you come back to it.
Not long after
'Skelly' is discovered in Queensbury House, the corpse of the prospective
MSP Roddy Grieve is also found there. Siobhan Clarke witnesses the
suicide of a tramp who had half a million in the bank. Meanwhile, two men
are assaulting women from singles' clubs. Rebus's investigation brings
him to Rosslyn Chapel, the cryptic home of cranks and the Knights Templar, the
secretive movement that was the first police force, invented banking, that fought
at Bannockburn, and laid the foundations of Scotland's Masonic tradition.
However, Rebus is far more interested in the Edinburgh masons of the last
twenty years, since the previous devolution referendum. Just whose is the
body in the fireplace at Queensbury House? Early on in the novel, a
historian relates the tale about the lunatic son of the Duke of Queensbury who
ate a servant on the night of the Act of Union, and left him on
a spit in the fireplace. This is where Rankin is at his best - he employs
the real Edinburgh to great effect. The Oxford Bar, Rebus's local, is a
real hostelry. This adds a note of authenticity to Rankin's work, and
it's quite stimulating trying to track down all the locations mentioned in this
novel. It's also amusing to see Rebus's skepticism about devolution -
rogues will always be rogues, no matter where they're housed. Ian Rankin
also seems to be warming to his new career as literary critic. There's a
fair bit of
Hugh MacDiarmid in this book, fairly appropriately, as he was a founder
of the Scottish Nationalist party. MacDiarmid also joined the Communist
party at a quite inappropriate time. The Grieve family have been in
politics for generations, starting from the Liberal Party, from Old to New
Labour, with also a flirtation with the Tories. An artistic as well as a
political family, they have an 'unknown' MacDiarmid poem hanging on the walls
of the family home. MacDiarmid's real name was Christopher Murray Grieve
(although he's no relation of the Grieve family here). He's not the
only one to use a pseudonym in the novel: so does the mysterious suicide
victim, 'Chris Mackie', but for less artistic reasons.
You don't have to have read all the other novels in this series to appreciate
this book. I can compare this with The Hanging Garden and
see that Rankin still maintains his obsession with popular music (but then
Rebus is an aficionado too, so that's alright - although it does mean that the inevitable
recording session makes its way into the book). This might be a bit
tiresome, but then again I guess detectives do have to have some small talk to
relax their subjects. Rebus says he's been reading up on his Edinburgh
history recently, but so has Rankin too. Indeed, the city seems almost
more alive than the inspector himself, even though most of its tales
concern death. The mortality of someone very close to Rebus is brought
into question, someone who seems larger than life, someone with a lot more
vitality than Rebus, say... I think one of the problems with Rebus is
that he's so hard to picture, and as the TV producers have probably found, so
very hard to cast. Rebus seems more 'thing' than man, hard to make
out from the shadows (not a pop reference). I see that Rankin's new
novel is called The
Falls - will Rebus ride the Reichenbach, locked in mortal combat with
his Moriarty, in the city where Doyle learnt from Bell? Has Ian Rankin
grown tired of his creation? Or has he just developed a new
obsession for the music of Mark E. Smith?
Authortrek
Rating: 9/10.
Kevin
Patrick Mahoney
To
find out more about the author, please visit our Ian Rankin page.
The
following links provide more information about the cultural context of the
novel:
The Old
Astronomer to his Pupil - the poem which provides Rankin's title
Overview
of Queensbury House - including the story of the lunatic James Douglas
Lothian and Borders Police homepage -
covering all the police buildings mentioned in the novel, like Fettes and St
Leonard's
Christopher Murray Grieve -
more info on Grieve's politics
Rosslyn Chapel - the Official
Website
Rolling Stones Ultimate fansite -
mention Ian Stewart, the obscure member of the band
Valvona and Crolla - Hood and
Wylie eat at this exclusive establishment (I wonder how much Rankin charges for
product placement!)
The Oxford Bar homepage - Rebus's
local
Oxford Bar Edinburgh webpage -
more details about the Oxford Bar's literary history
Barclay James Harvest homepage -
one of the bands mentioned in the novel
Kinkell Braes Caravan Park -
this is where Rebus holidayed when younger
Bunnahabhain - Rebus
drinks this whisky (see what I mean about product placement?)
Melrose Abbey and the mystery
of Robert the Bruce's Heart
Bruce's
Heart Examined in Laboratory
The Priory of Sion -
another nutty book about the Templars
The
Story of the First Crusade
The Knights Templar - the world's first
bankers and policemen
Such
a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation - is the Burns' song Cafferty sings
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