We have a theory in our house about British television dramas: there are about 25 actors total in Great Britain, and they are all in all the shows that we like. Look: there's Sam from Foyle's War in Death in Paradise! Roz from MI5 in Crimson Field! Who isn't in Wolf Hall - Soames Forsyte, Jenny Lee, Mycroft, Lady Persie from the Upstairs/Downstairs reboot, to name a few. And don't get me started on the unpleasant but apparently bulletproof Spratt from the Dowager's household on Downton Abbey - we see him all over the place, in Crimson Field, Foyle's War, and Inspector George Gently.
A related phenomenon is that I am starting to see fictional detectives in TV terms; namely, Malcolm Fox, in my mind's eye, IS George Gently. Doesn't matter that Fox is in Edinburgh and Gently in Durham, or that Gently is obviously older than Fox but takes place about 40 years earlier. There is something in the older, tolerant UK-ish detective with younger impetuous sidekicks that just says white-haired, wise George Gently.
There is a bit of irony in this. The plot line in Ian Rankin's second Complaints novel, The Impossible Dead, actually turns on the topic of Scottish nationalism, especially its less-stable 1980s incarnation. This story, set sometime in the now, before the independence referendum of 2014 but firmly in the time of the Scottish National Party's political ascendancy, involves events and characters from the movement's more radical recent past. The characters are fictional, but not the organizations, and Rankin effectively links them to the the weird old days of the paranoid 1980s: the bitter end of the Cold War, nuclear arms development, and terrorism in and out of the U.K. (frightening in its day but somehow more comprehensible than the religiously extremist and sophisticatedly global version we live with now). The younger cops don't really know from this time, but Foxy remembers. It may be this nostalgia* that makes me link Fox and Gently - both characters operate with an undertone of melancholy that makes them more interesting than your standard single male investigator of a certain age.
Gently's melancholy is firmly rooted in his wife's murder, which, with his being a cop, feeds that whole series. In Fox's case, the melancholy is less around his work or longing for the bad old days, and more about his elderly father's decline and his difficult relationship with his impossibly selfish sister. This thread doesn't appear at first to fit in this box-within-a-box story of misbehaving cops, dead cops, and old, unresolved (not unsolved, just, perhaps not correctly solved) deaths. But I think it is really about coming to terms with your past self, whether that is your political identity, your profession, your additions, or maybe even just your role in your family.
Still, there is a plot, and it feels somehow a disservice to lump Fox and his Scottish compatriots with a Brit. In The Impossible, Fox and his colleagues Kaye and Naysmith, the despised Complaints, must review some alleged suspicious testimony on the part of cops in another town. In the course of that work, a retired cop - the one who blew the lid on the misbehavior that the others may be covering up - is found dead, and he, as it happens, turns out to have been investigating a possible cover-up of a death decades earlier, of a political firebrand. Confused yet? Yeah, that's how this goes. Just when you think you've got a handle on it, someone else who may or may not be covering up some less savoury part of his or her past appears. And then Fox keeps getting pulled back home to deal with his father's failing health and his sister's irrational behavior around that. While I found the piecing together of the modern radical part of Scottish politics quite interesting, it is never really clear why Fox keeps pursuing the investigation. Having overstepped at one point in the initial internal investigation, he was warned off pretty early, but keeps poking around, incurring the wrath or more and more senior police and government officials. The eventual resolution is connected to his own history only tangentially, and ultimately feels a bit forced.
That said, Fox is a sympathetic character, and the story is well-written. And when I thought about it, the whole coming-to-terms-with-your-past theme makes some sense. I'm not likely to seek out another Complaints but I still like them better than grumpy Rebus. And if you like the Scots, you'll enjoy this one.
* Nostalgia is not the right word, for that evokes something you like remembering, and you don't really want to think more than you have to about letter bombs and nationalist terrorism.
Showing posts with label Ian Rankin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian Rankin. Show all posts
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Sunday, September 14, 2014
The Complaints
When Cathy Pfister asked if I knew about Ian Rankin, I sighed inwardly because as Regular Readers know, I got off that bandwagon a while ago. But then she said that she had The Complaints and that she'd liked it, and it is true that I'd "heard" positive reports (I can't pinpoint the sources, hence the ""). So, I received a bag with not one but three of this new-ish series from the popular Scottish author of the noir-ish John Rebus series.
Our Hero is one Malcolm Fox, awkwardly called Foxy by colleagues, a not-burnt-out-but-maybe-a-little-singed-by-life Inspector with the Complaints and Conduct bureau of the Scottish police in Edinburgh. What we in American cop shows would call IAB, or Internal Affairs Bureau - you know, the cops who investigate the cops. In this extremely convoluted story, Fox has just finished a successful investigation into a bad guy at another precinct, when he's asked to investigate a young colleague at that same station. At the same time, his sister's good-for-nothing husband goes and gets himself killed, and suspicion starts to fall on Fox, even though the lead investigator is working with Jamie Breck, the fellow Fox is investigating. (See what I mean?) This is all set against a backdrop of failing construction projects and previously high-flying real-estate magnates which are all victims of the banking crisis and world-wide recession of 2009. Fox and Breck manage to step on enough toes to get themselves both thrown off the murder case, but apparently gluttons for punishment keep working away at it, injuring themselves and further threatening their careers in the process.
Malcolm Fox is described on the first page "slow and steady, and only occasionally to be feared" (3) which sums up this book. It plods along, although the plot is complicated enough to keep you sort of engaged, but even the occasional bout of thuggery is barely enough to keep me from putting the book down. Had I known how much I'd enjoy the latest Philip Kerr (next up!), I'd have dropped this. It's not a bad book - it is unobtrusively well-written, and Fox is not nearly so profoundly unhappy as Rebus. But I can't summon up any more exciting verbiage about it other than to fall back on cliche and say that it just didn't light a fire.
BUT. The "Reading Group Guide" at the end (what reading group would pick this? they'd die of boredom ten minutes into their discussion about it) did provide a spectacular save for this novel, and made me glad I'd stuck it out. Rankin offers his list of Ten Literary Crime Novels, with a solid paragraph about each one. The list is quite eclectic:
1. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of Justified Sinner, James Hogg, 1824
2. Bleak House, Charles Dickens, 1853
3. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1866
4. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886
5. Brighton Rock, Graham Greene, 1938
6. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, 1939
7. Roseanna, Maj. Sowall and Per Wahloo, 1965
8. The Driver's Seat, Muriel Spark, 1970
9. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, 1980
10. Live Flesh, Ruth Rendell, 1986
I've only heard of about half of these (probably the same ones you have), and read even fewer. Would you consider Jekyll and Hyde to be crime fiction? Apparently Stevenson was influenced by a crime boss in London and Rankin says he likes to think about the idea of good people doing bad things - so okay, that is one of the fundamental threads in any crime novel. There are about a billion top-ten lists of crime fiction out there, but they are usually written by critics or "experts" or really anyone who has a list - you don't see them from authors themselves that much. Most contain a Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene shows up occasionally, along with The 39 Steps. Can't say that I've ever seen Dickens or Dostoyevsky, so I think it might be a treat to try and read my way through this one.
The Guide also includes a list of Fox's favorite walks, and Breck's favorite restaurants, which, if I ever get to Edinburgh again, I'll be sure to look up.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Tooth and Nail
I was maybe half-way through Ian Rankin's Tooth and Nail (St. Martin's Minotaur 1992), the third in the Inspector Rebus series, when I started to wonder why I had stayed with Rebus into the third book. He's not particularly appealing, or smart, or even interesting as far as I can tell. And in this story Rebus doesn't contribute a whole heck of a lot to the plot development, other than a few startling insights and hunches, which, I get it, are sometimes the stuff of brilliant deduction. But here they just feel like an effort to get to the next stage of the investigation.
Rebus has been seconded to London to help with an investigation into a grisly series of murders by a perp who seems to operate according to no particular pattern other than to really do nasty things to his victims, and leave a characteristic bite mark on their bellies. Since he's in London, the perpetually depressed and work-obsessed Rebus takes the opportunity to visit with his former wife and their daughter, and that goes about as well as one might expect, which is to say kind of dismally. He has a massive inferiority complex about being from the sticks (Edinburgh, hardly, but according to Rebus everyone looks down on Jocks). He meets a predictably gorgeous, predictably mysterious woman with whom he predictably sleeps early on. She is predictably involved in the resolution of the story. Rebus and his English counterpart, George Flight, have predictable conflicts, and predictable resolutions.
Our hero presents himself - to be fair, this is his own assessment - as old (he's what, in his forties? hardly!) and overweight. Despite references to books and religion "Where was the religion for man who believed in God but not in God's religion?" 241, while trying to get a taxi, for chrissake), he comes across not particularly smart - an unnecessary foray into the British Museum where he learns about the Rosetta Stone seems a heavy-handed way to make a point about the attention to detail required in good police work. And he's a stubborn cuss, perpetually on the brink of losing his job over his inability to follow orders. Of course, like all coppers, he drinks too much, sleeps too little, and operates on the brink of exhaustion. But there is no forgiving this:
"Rebus put down the telephone and felt an immense weariness take control of him, weighting his legs and arms and head. He took several deep breaths and rose to his feet, then walked to the sink and splashed water on his fce, rubbing a wet hand around his neck and throat. He looked up, hardly recognizing himself in the wall-mounted mirror, signed and spread his hands either side of his face, the way he'd seen Roy Scheider do once in a film.
'It's showtime.'" (135)
I've seen All That Jazz, and John Rebus, you are no Bob Fosse. I don't mind a flawed hero, but please make it interesting!
I will say that there are some terrific red herrings in this story. These involve some situations and characters that are introduced just subtly enough to inject a frisson of uncertainty into the proceedings. So, the climax is not predictable, but it is ludicrous. One wonders if the author couldn't decide quite who the killer should be, and drew a name out of a hat as he was writing the last couple of chapters.
Time to give Rebus a rest for a bit.
Rebus has been seconded to London to help with an investigation into a grisly series of murders by a perp who seems to operate according to no particular pattern other than to really do nasty things to his victims, and leave a characteristic bite mark on their bellies. Since he's in London, the perpetually depressed and work-obsessed Rebus takes the opportunity to visit with his former wife and their daughter, and that goes about as well as one might expect, which is to say kind of dismally. He has a massive inferiority complex about being from the sticks (Edinburgh, hardly, but according to Rebus everyone looks down on Jocks). He meets a predictably gorgeous, predictably mysterious woman with whom he predictably sleeps early on. She is predictably involved in the resolution of the story. Rebus and his English counterpart, George Flight, have predictable conflicts, and predictable resolutions.
Our hero presents himself - to be fair, this is his own assessment - as old (he's what, in his forties? hardly!) and overweight. Despite references to books and religion "Where was the religion for man who believed in God but not in God's religion?" 241, while trying to get a taxi, for chrissake), he comes across not particularly smart - an unnecessary foray into the British Museum where he learns about the Rosetta Stone seems a heavy-handed way to make a point about the attention to detail required in good police work. And he's a stubborn cuss, perpetually on the brink of losing his job over his inability to follow orders. Of course, like all coppers, he drinks too much, sleeps too little, and operates on the brink of exhaustion. But there is no forgiving this:
"Rebus put down the telephone and felt an immense weariness take control of him, weighting his legs and arms and head. He took several deep breaths and rose to his feet, then walked to the sink and splashed water on his fce, rubbing a wet hand around his neck and throat. He looked up, hardly recognizing himself in the wall-mounted mirror, signed and spread his hands either side of his face, the way he'd seen Roy Scheider do once in a film.
'It's showtime.'" (135)
I've seen All That Jazz, and John Rebus, you are no Bob Fosse. I don't mind a flawed hero, but please make it interesting!
I will say that there are some terrific red herrings in this story. These involve some situations and characters that are introduced just subtly enough to inject a frisson of uncertainty into the proceedings. So, the climax is not predictable, but it is ludicrous. One wonders if the author couldn't decide quite who the killer should be, and drew a name out of a hat as he was writing the last couple of chapters.
Time to give Rebus a rest for a bit.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Hide and Seek
A rebus is one of those puzzles where pictures or symbols are used to represent words or parts of words. There is always one in the Boston Globe, and my aforementiond son (he of Holmes fascination) is pretty good at figuring them out. I'm still trying to figure out the puzzle of Edinburgh-based Inspector John Rebus, the creation of writer Ian Rankin. Is he dark and disturbed, which he seemed to be in the first, Knots and Crosses? Just jaded, which the liberal use of the word "son" when talking withe junior officers would suggest, in Hide and Seek? Or falling into the crusty-but-decent fellow trap, which is indicated by his kindly treatment of the problematic Tracy, also in Hide and Seek?
In this second of Rankin's Rebus novels, our "hero" is quickly convinced that the seemingly-routine death of a junkie is more than just your garden-variety overdose, esp. when it appears that there may have been some dabbling in the occult at the scene of the crime. But since no one else thinks this case is worth pursuing, he's having to do it on his own time, while serving reluctantly on his boss' anti-drugs committee, which just happens to be stocked with the top male representatives of Edinburgh's ruling caste. I'm not giving anything away to say that these threads tie up into a moderately ripping detective story. Still there is one of those Ian Rutledge-like quiet conversations that moves the plot forward, and the abrupt resolution makes sense with the plot but isn't completely satisfying. There is something slightly thin about these stories, a bit meager in development and detail. Maybe it is a Scottish thing.
I think the jury of me is out on Rebus, but I'll give him another go.
In this second of Rankin's Rebus novels, our "hero" is quickly convinced that the seemingly-routine death of a junkie is more than just your garden-variety overdose, esp. when it appears that there may have been some dabbling in the occult at the scene of the crime. But since no one else thinks this case is worth pursuing, he's having to do it on his own time, while serving reluctantly on his boss' anti-drugs committee, which just happens to be stocked with the top male representatives of Edinburgh's ruling caste. I'm not giving anything away to say that these threads tie up into a moderately ripping detective story. Still there is one of those Ian Rutledge-like quiet conversations that moves the plot forward, and the abrupt resolution makes sense with the plot but isn't completely satisfying. There is something slightly thin about these stories, a bit meager in development and detail. Maybe it is a Scottish thing.
I think the jury of me is out on Rebus, but I'll give him another go.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Brits
This is the second of a few catch-up posts, to give an idea of where my crime reading ranges.
Of course, the British are acknowledged masters of all kinds of crime fiction. Conan Doyle, Agathe Christie, need we say more? Well, yes, and this select list barely scratches the surface of this deep pool.
A late-breaking fave for me is Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. These are a must for any anglophile or London-ophile or really anyone who admires brilliant eccentricity. They verge on the too-cute, so if you don't like humor, esp. the British kind, steer clear of Bryant and May. That said, the later ones get rather darker at times and that helps to keep the cute in check. They are also so drenched by a topically narrow flood of intellectual minutae (London history), that one can drown in the details. But what an enjoyable way to go. The culinary notes here that stick here, truly, are obscure British boiled sweeties, and Arthur Bryant's West Indian landlady Alma (who cannot cook according to Bryant, but does, quite a bit). Fowler's next installment starring the indomitable and apparently indesctructable duo is due out in March, hoorah.
In a rather different vein, yet still very very British, is Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series. Classic village mysteries starring Rutledge and his hant, Hamish. The conceit of Rutledge's WW1-generated shell shock manifesting itself as a the ghost of a man whom he executed for dereliction of duty is inventive, proper in an English way, and just shivery enough to keep you on guard as you read. Here's an interview with Rutledge himself. One must drink gallons of tea while reading an Ian Rutledge novel., and look forward to thick buttered toast served in farmhouse kitchens. None of the anglophilic pleasure of these books is diminished by the realization that Charles Todd is actually a mother-and-son writing team living in North Carolina. What fun they must have researching and writing these novels.
I don't think those creepy ones set in the English churches count here, Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series. The premise is that Merrily, the parish priest in a postcard perfect English village, is also an exorcist of sorts (although that term is a bit dramatic for the locals), and apparently there is loads of dark and evil stuff just sitting under that picturesque frosting, with which Merrily must do regular battle. They grabbed my attention for a while but ultimately I found them providing not so much a frisson of creepiness but a shrug of depression. Lighten up, people.
Ian Rankin is a fave author among those who follow British crime, and I've just read the first in his John Rebus series, Knots and Crosses. Edinburgh this time (so, technically not a Brit but let's call it the UK until they get that indepedence vote), and again working the theme of exposing-the-dark-underside-of-a-beloved-city, a bit like Rickman above. But while Rankin's Rebus is as depressed a detective as one can run across in this literature (maybe only surpassed by Kurt Wallander), he's a little nastier than Merrily Watkins, and since you can't blame the bad stuff on the underworld or the afterworld or whatever they call it in the border country, the story is far more compelling. It is also better-written. I look forward to reading more of these.
And finally, in a complete departure from Rebus, I recently read Charles Finch's A Beautiful Blue Death, the first in a series starring a Victorian gentleman sleuth named Charles Lenox. Here we are back in England in her glory days, height of the Empire, country houses, urban gin pots, lords and ladies, etc. It could all be a bit twee, but just when it threatens to settle into costume drama, Finch manages to move the plot along with a brisk twist, and he's a pretty good writer for a Yalie. I confess a certain pleasure at settling in with Lenox this winter, since his genuine delight in a good cup of tea in front a roaring fire is so very evident from the start. I could do with less of his lady friend, since it is only her wealth and station that permits her to operate so independently (his too, for that matter), so readers who are offended by class-consciousness should look elsewhere for their 19th sleuthing.
This is obviously a very short list. Ranking them on a pure enjoyment scale, I'd probably say Fowler, Todd, Rankin, Lenox. Writing-wise, mybe Rankin would top this list. Fowler and Todd have new ones out or coming out, and I want to read more Rankin and Benjamin Black (if we include Scotland here, maybe Ireland?). That's going to be a lot of tea.
Update: I'm realizing that I left a couple off of here. John Lawton's Frederick Troy series gets a lot of love from the critics, I gather. I read Second Violin, which is the sixth book in the series, although it offers the backstory for all the others, so one can read it first. Didn't take to it - too many plot lines, cliffhanger-y chapters, and a hero who has a lot gals on strings. It felt much shallower than I had thought it would. Still, people love these, so maybe I'll try another someday.
Finally, I tried out Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series, set in Bath, England, with The Last Detective. Another that really didn't stick. Diamond is supposed to be hard-boiled and gruff, but doesn't really have any other character traits as far as I can tell, and lacks the introspection of other hard-boiled but more complicated detectives such as John Rebus or Salvo Montalbano.
Of course, the British are acknowledged masters of all kinds of crime fiction. Conan Doyle, Agathe Christie, need we say more? Well, yes, and this select list barely scratches the surface of this deep pool.
A late-breaking fave for me is Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. These are a must for any anglophile or London-ophile or really anyone who admires brilliant eccentricity. They verge on the too-cute, so if you don't like humor, esp. the British kind, steer clear of Bryant and May. That said, the later ones get rather darker at times and that helps to keep the cute in check. They are also so drenched by a topically narrow flood of intellectual minutae (London history), that one can drown in the details. But what an enjoyable way to go. The culinary notes here that stick here, truly, are obscure British boiled sweeties, and Arthur Bryant's West Indian landlady Alma (who cannot cook according to Bryant, but does, quite a bit). Fowler's next installment starring the indomitable and apparently indesctructable duo is due out in March, hoorah.
In a rather different vein, yet still very very British, is Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series. Classic village mysteries starring Rutledge and his hant, Hamish. The conceit of Rutledge's WW1-generated shell shock manifesting itself as a the ghost of a man whom he executed for dereliction of duty is inventive, proper in an English way, and just shivery enough to keep you on guard as you read. Here's an interview with Rutledge himself. One must drink gallons of tea while reading an Ian Rutledge novel., and look forward to thick buttered toast served in farmhouse kitchens. None of the anglophilic pleasure of these books is diminished by the realization that Charles Todd is actually a mother-and-son writing team living in North Carolina. What fun they must have researching and writing these novels.
I don't think those creepy ones set in the English churches count here, Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series. The premise is that Merrily, the parish priest in a postcard perfect English village, is also an exorcist of sorts (although that term is a bit dramatic for the locals), and apparently there is loads of dark and evil stuff just sitting under that picturesque frosting, with which Merrily must do regular battle. They grabbed my attention for a while but ultimately I found them providing not so much a frisson of creepiness but a shrug of depression. Lighten up, people.
Ian Rankin is a fave author among those who follow British crime, and I've just read the first in his John Rebus series, Knots and Crosses. Edinburgh this time (so, technically not a Brit but let's call it the UK until they get that indepedence vote), and again working the theme of exposing-the-dark-underside-of-a-beloved-city, a bit like Rickman above. But while Rankin's Rebus is as depressed a detective as one can run across in this literature (maybe only surpassed by Kurt Wallander), he's a little nastier than Merrily Watkins, and since you can't blame the bad stuff on the underworld or the afterworld or whatever they call it in the border country, the story is far more compelling. It is also better-written. I look forward to reading more of these.
And finally, in a complete departure from Rebus, I recently read Charles Finch's A Beautiful Blue Death, the first in a series starring a Victorian gentleman sleuth named Charles Lenox. Here we are back in England in her glory days, height of the Empire, country houses, urban gin pots, lords and ladies, etc. It could all be a bit twee, but just when it threatens to settle into costume drama, Finch manages to move the plot along with a brisk twist, and he's a pretty good writer for a Yalie. I confess a certain pleasure at settling in with Lenox this winter, since his genuine delight in a good cup of tea in front a roaring fire is so very evident from the start. I could do with less of his lady friend, since it is only her wealth and station that permits her to operate so independently (his too, for that matter), so readers who are offended by class-consciousness should look elsewhere for their 19th sleuthing.
This is obviously a very short list. Ranking them on a pure enjoyment scale, I'd probably say Fowler, Todd, Rankin, Lenox. Writing-wise, mybe Rankin would top this list. Fowler and Todd have new ones out or coming out, and I want to read more Rankin and Benjamin Black (if we include Scotland here, maybe Ireland?). That's going to be a lot of tea.
Update: I'm realizing that I left a couple off of here. John Lawton's Frederick Troy series gets a lot of love from the critics, I gather. I read Second Violin, which is the sixth book in the series, although it offers the backstory for all the others, so one can read it first. Didn't take to it - too many plot lines, cliffhanger-y chapters, and a hero who has a lot gals on strings. It felt much shallower than I had thought it would. Still, people love these, so maybe I'll try another someday.
Finally, I tried out Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series, set in Bath, England, with The Last Detective. Another that really didn't stick. Diamond is supposed to be hard-boiled and gruff, but doesn't really have any other character traits as far as I can tell, and lacks the introspection of other hard-boiled but more complicated detectives such as John Rebus or Salvo Montalbano.
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