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.

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.