BENGALURU: I call myself a regular reader of detective fiction. It's what I read most often. Somehow though, I hadn't yet read Ian Rankin before early this year. I did know, of course, that Ian Rankin is Scottish, and he is one of the most well-known detective writers of the day and age; he writes the most noir-ish, yet gripping detective novels that you can find on the bookshelf.
A couple of weeks back, I was laid low by a bug and since I had a few books of Rankin with me, I finished Knots and Crosses, his first with the famous Inspector Rebus.
The book starts with the abductions and murders of two adolescent girls. Detective Sergeant of the Edinburgh police department, John Rebus (the famous Inspector started as Sergeant Rebus), is assigned to this case. And the events of the case quickly get more morbid, with two more girls disappearing.
In the meanwhile, Rebus is going through a form of personal hell, trying and failing to adjust to his divorce and the strained relationship with his teenage daughter, and struggling to hold on to his sanity while the memory of his past with the SAS continue to eat at him from within.
It’s as good a first book of a series as you can find. Ian Rankin is a sensational writer. I doubt if there is any detective most flawed, more doomed than the chief protagonist, DS John Rebus. A brilliant creation!
There are great scenes, and it is pretty close to perfect as a starter to a series.
However, as a standalone detective mystery, this isn't exactly the best of the breed. Why do I say so? I generally ask three questions to test if a single book in a series works by itself (while we all agree that Ian Rankin and John Rebus work very well indeed):
Test 1: Could the mystery have been solved by another brilliant detective? Yes is good, no is bad.
Answer: No. Nobody apart from Rebus could have solved it.
Test 2: Are there things that the readers didn't know that were revealed to them very late in the novel? No is good. Yes is bad.
Answer: Yes.
Test 3: Was the solution (either) too easy (or) too vague? No is good. Yes is bad.
Answer: Yes. The latter.
But here's the point. This wasn't a successful novel. It wasn't meant to be. It was the first novel in a series, and any reader who reads this book will be intrigued enough to read DS Rebus #2. This is the novel which builds up the character and the setting. And that's job well done.
The writer has published short stories in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore .