CHENNAI: 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 until early this year. I did know, of course, that Ian Rankin is Irish, and he is one of the well-known detective writers of the day and age, he writes the most noir-ish, yet gripping detective novels.
A couple of weeks back, I was laid low by a bug and since I had a couple of books of Rankin with me, I started with Knots and Crosses, his first with the famous Inspector Rebus.
The book starts with the abductions and murders of two girls. Detective Sergeant of the Edinburgh police department, John Rebus, is assigned to this case. And the events of the case quickly get more morbid, with two more girls disappearing. Meanwhile, Rebus is going through a personal hell, trying and failing to adjust to his divorce and the relationship with his teenage daughter, and holds on to his sanity with the memory of his past.
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 more 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 detective mystery, standalone, this isn’t exactly the best of the breed. Why do I say so? I generally ask three questions to test if the book works (while we all agree that the series and John Rebus work very well indeed):
Test 1: The mystery could not have been solved by anyone apart from Rebus.
Test 2: Are there things that the readers didn’t know that were revealed to them very late in the novel? Yes.
Test 3: Was it (either) too easy (or) too vague? 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.
Recommended reading: Knots and Crosses — Ian Rankin.
@spinstripe
(The writer is Financial Architect in Bangalore, whose short stories have been published in magazines in India and Singapore)