Ian Rankin and Rebus

Ian Rankin

Standing in Another Man’s Grave.  Ian Rankin.  2012.  Hachette. Pp458.  $36.99

Parts of this article are based on a telephone interview with Ian Rankin in September.  And a slightly different form of the article first appeared in the The Press Weekend Review, Christchurch, on November 3, 2012.

Ken Strongman

Ian Rankin has written many books, mainly of crime fiction.  Some have been stand-alone, others have featured Detective Malcolm Fox, but most have been centred around Inspector John Rebus, Rankin’s best known protagonist.  Rankin’s books have been translated into 36 languages, he has received four Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers’ Association and in 2004 received America’s Edgar Award.  At another level entirely, he has also received honorary degrees from five Universities and has been awarded the OBE.

Rebus:  ‘…a puzzle in which words are represented by a combination of pictures and individual letters…’  Historically ‘…an ornamental device associated with a person to whose name it seemingly alludes.’  (N.O.D.E.)  It was a very clever name to choose for a character that is definitely an intriguing puzzle although Rankin’s books are no ornamental devices.

John Rebus is a fine old-fashioned cop, but is also a decidedly awkward bugger.  He solves crimes but annoys nearly everyone he touches. Like so many memorable fictional detectives there is more than a hint of self-destructiveness about him and he cannot stop himself from a sort of cynical directness.  With Rebus there is no innuendo and no hidden messages; WYSIWYG, with brutal frankness.  Integrity abounds and comparisons are inevitable with Mankell’s Wallendar (more angst-filled)in Sweden, Nesbo’s Harry Hole (more self-destructive) in Norway and McBride’s D S Logan (grittier and tougher)in Aberdeen.  Interestingly, however, when Ian Rankin created Rebus, more than a quarter of a century ago, he had read very little crime fiction.  But he had long been intrigued by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.

Rebus is nothing like Rankin’s other Edinburgh cop, Malcolm Fox, who polices the police, particularly police like Rebus.  No-one likes an internal affairs man, but a few do at least respect Rebus.  And thinking of Edinburgh, the city is the other main character in Rankin’s books.  Read them and one comes to know Edinburgh without ever visiting it.

Rankin’s latest book, ‘Standing in Another Man’s Grave’ very cleverly brings Rebus back from his retirement, five years ago in “Exit Music”. This seemed like the end of the line for Rebus, 25 years after he began in “Knots and Crosses”.  But here he is again, even more like himself than ever, working as a civilian for the police, dealing with cold cases.  One of these cases begins to lead forwards rather than backwards, pointing to a series of disappearances.  Suddenly, Rebus has managed to inveigle his way back as a consultant to his old unit.  He is working for Siobhan Clarke, who used to work for him and whom, to some extent, he created in his own likeness.  She is therefore simultaneously very pleased and yet horrified to see him back, much as he would have been in similar circumstances.

Meanwhile, Rebus’s old nemesis, Edinburgh ex-crime boss Big Ger Cafferty keeps dropping round to see him to persuade him out for a pint.  This is exactly the sort of thing that makes Malcolm Fox (who also appears in this book) even more suspicious of Rebus than he already is.  Neither does it please Rebus much; he still treats Cafferty with a sort of contempt laced with a clear understanding of what drives him.

Rankin says that the idea for this book occurred to him well before he realized that he could bring Rebus back into it.  He wanted to write what he describes as a ‘road book’, one that concentrated on the A9, which runs up the length of Scotland.  He also wanted to explore the lives and motivations of parents who had lost a child in mysterious and unexplained circumstances.  He manages both in “Standing in Another Man’s Grave”.

Rankin’s way of bringing Rebus out of retirement was practicality itself.  He had him retire at a time when at 60 he had to retire because of the requirements of the Scottish police.  Then a few years later, as a cost (pension) saving exercise, they put the retirement age back to 65 or more.  So Rebus could not only be working as a civilian helper to the police, but could even apply for his old job.  This was just as well, because as Rankin puts it “It’s work that keeps Rebus going”

It is great to have John Rebus back and very clever of Rankin to have found a way to do it.  As much as anything, it seems to have been prompted by the death of Jackie Leven, a singer-songwriter friend of Rebus.  They had even toured and recorded a show together.  The title ‘Standing in Another Man’s Grave’ was inspired by one of Leven’s songs.   Rebus is clearly one of the great creations of crime fiction.  He is anarchic, maverick, independent, cynical, self-destructive, direct and because of all this, might seem flawed.  In short, he is the puzzle that his name suggests and which draws one inexorably to the next book.

As well as sheer, extremely well-written entertainment, Ian Rankin’s crime fiction is driven by his fascination with the nature of good and evil. The progression of his novels represents his exploration of the balance between the two and of the horrors that seem always to be there beneath the surface.  He even sees his city, Edinburgh, as representing this tension.  The tourist sees an elegant, nicely appointed city.  Under the surface, unspeakable things occur, as they do everywhere.  For which, we need Rebus to keep going.

Zane Lovitt

This review first appeared in The Christchurch Press on 15/9/12

The Midnight Promise.  Zane Lovitt. 2012.  Text Publishing.  Pp 283. $37.

Ken Strongman

The subtitle of ‘The Midnight Promise’, Zane Lovitt’s first book, is ‘A detective’s story in ten cases.’  There are indeed ten cases described for John Dorn, who styles himself as a private inquiry agent.  Mostly, the cases involve stuff-ups, either for the person in trouble, or for John Dorn or simply for life in general in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

Each case is unique and each involves one of life’s imponderables and yet they build inexorably to the final case in which John Dorn meets his midnight promise.  This final case is grittier than the others, but still revolves round some surprising puzzles.

The publisher’s blurb describes this as “The outstanding literary debut of the year”. Setting side the hyperbole that typifies such comments, this might well be the best first book to appear in Australia this year, and it is definitely interesting and unusual as an example of crime fiction, but ‘outstanding’? Almost.

John Dorn is a typical private eye, going from non-paying case to non-paying case, helping the abject and the bereft in the true Robin Hood style.  He has a seedy, run-down office, that, as his life worsens, eventually doubles as his living quarters.  He struggles to stop thinking about the woman to whom he was once engaged.  He struggles to remain un-envious of a successful layer friend who attempts to throw him crumbs of financial comfort.  Above all, he has a wryly self-deprecating view of life – the stuff of internal smiles rather than guffaws.

‘The Midnight Promise’ is, then, nicely amusing, particularly in the tortuous conversations that John Dorn has with his clients as he makes his slightly bemused way around suburban Melbourne. But its singularity comes from Dorn’s way of looking at life.  He sees merit where others do not, he sees angles that remain obscure to others.  In many ways, he gets himself into situations that beset all other fictional private inquiry agents, but for all the wrong reasons.  And it is this that makes the book unique.

The final puzzle for Zane Lovitt is what he will do next for John Dorn.  There have to be further cases. To predict their direction is hard, but they will be singular.  Lovitt is a new voice in crime fiction.

Chris Culver

This review first appeared in  the Christchurch Press on Saturday Sept 8, 2012

The Abbey.  Chris Culver. 2011. Sphere.  Pp391. $27.99

Ken Strongman

“The Abbey” is Chris Culver’s first novel and it is inevitable that it will prove to be the foretaste of a successful series.  There has been so much crime fiction written that it becomes increasingly difficult to find a new angle.  But Chris Culver has done it.

Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective now working for the prosecutor’s office and attending law school part-time.  As an Arab, he is also enshrouded in the Islamic faith and if possible has prayers twice a day with his wife and daughter.  But the strictures of his faith apart, he needs one or two quick snifters to get him through his day and uses a mouthwash to keep it from his wife.

In the way of crime fiction detectives, Ash is both tough-bodied and tender-hearted.  And he is driven in his battle with Indianapolis’s forces of darkness by his previous mistakes.  Why set the book in Indianapolis?  Well, as one of the characters says, it is only six hours drive from 50% of America’s population.  One always learns something from crime fiction, if such observations can be believed.

”The Abbey” of the title is a nightclub that caters to young would-be vampires in goth garb.  The drinking of phials of blood is part of this sub-culture.  The plot of the book revolves round an interplay between said phials and the import into the USA of other phials of a liquid, agua rica, that forms a stage in the process of making pure cocaine.  Along the way, young people, including Ash’s niece, are murdered; thus his involvement.

“The Abbey” is a fast, satisfying read with nefarious criminals, corruption in high places and some iffy members of the IMPD.  There is even a highly qualified female biochemist who essentially forms a modern version of the yellow peril. Murders are made to look like suicide or made to seem committed by the wrong people.  Ash Rashid walks on the edge of the law and at one point even manages to be arrested. He is a compelling new protagonist, an Islamic Dirty Harry with a prayer mat.

TVNZ 7

There is no doubt that New Zealand is a pretty good place to live. There is the natural environment, most of it in the South Island, but with a few fine spots in the North. There is the country's remoteness from the remainder of the world, keeping some of that world's less desirable aspects at a good arm's length while allowing many of the more attractive bits of consumer nonsense to find their way into our lives.  There are the people, mercifully only a little over 4,000,000 of them.  Many of them are interesting and good fun with the comforting she'll-be-right, we-can-fix-anything, frontier attitude not entirely forgotten.  The big village feel of the country means that those who upset us, especially the politicians, don't have anywhere much to hide.

But sometimes we get it wrong. The shutting down of TVNZ 7 is the latest example.  If we are to regard ourselves as part of the modern, sophisticated 'Western' world, then public service broadcasting is an essential part of this.  It is not something put there in times of plenty for the titillation of the chattering classes.  In fact, I am fairly sure that it is not the chattering classes that watch it, as some have said.  Yes, this channel might not be watched by as many people who watch TV2 or TV3, or Sky Sport, or even those children's channels that allow parents extra time in bed at the weekends.

BUT THIS DOES NOT MATTER.  The important thing is that TVNZ 7 or its equivalent exist in New Zealand. It should be there, with a degree of serious-minded intellectual content (that can still be entertaining and amusing) if anybody should want to click onto it. If we want to we can find out what is going on in the arts and sciences, in public and current affairs or in society at large, in more depth than the commercial interests of the remainder of television allows.  And, it should be said, it is a huge remainder, even if one considers only the free-to-view channels. Commercial interests dominate our world, this cannot be helped.  But they do not have to dominate everything.

The idea of cross-subsidy runs throughout society.  In the business world, products that sell well sometimes support those that barely break even.  This is because there is some demand for the non-profitable item. In the University world subjects that are of high demand and that are relatively inexpensive to run support those that of lesser demand and more expensive to run.  This is because a University is not regarded as a University if it does not include, say, Music or Philosophy or Classics.  So. surely the more commercially viable parts of the television enterprise (and that, after all, is most of them) could find a way to support TVNZ 7 or its equivalent.

It is important not to get this wrong.  The strength of being a small country can also be its weakness.  When we get something wrong, it is completely obvious.  It cannot be hidden behind complex social structures or smothered under a blanket of political or commercial rhetoric.  And we are about to get this wrong and to revert to being a slightly less sophisticated and less desirable society than we were before TVNZ 7.

Dereliction

A few days ago I was taken to ex-Cathedral square in Christchurch.  Feeling slightly fraudulent in a bright yellow overjacket and bright orange hard hat I was guided through the wasteland that was High St to what used to be the square.  I was accompanied by two young men who are working to re-establish c1, a cafe that was an integral part of the CBD until February 2011. That they are undertaking this at all, given the devastation that surrounds them, is both remarkable and admirable.

In a prime position in the square is a hamburger and soft drink cart. This was our goal.  The women serving were full of good humour and the men surrounding the cart, in their colourful jackets and hard hats seemed oblivious to where they were.  The mildly scatalogical jokes and general piss-taking at first seemed exactly appropriate to the surroundings.

With dripping hamburgers and cans of soft drink we sat in a line on some concrete slabs.  Ahead of us was what remains of the cathedral, stained glass replaced by timber and spire replaced by sky. It looks not unlike the much older remnants of churches carefully preserved in English county towns. It perhaps should stay like this and provide a poignant memorial to the pre-earthquake city.

In all directions beyond the cathedral are large buildings.  For a while our conversation consisted of me asking whether or not particular buildings were due for demolition, to be told that they were, for the most part.  In the background were the constant grating thuds coming from what seemed like a crane that had been modified to wield an enormous hammer.  It was thumping and grinding away at the last few floors of the Crown Plaza.  If these buildings are that difficult to demolish why did they have to be demolished at all? This might be a question that relies on a thorough-going ignorance of engineering, but it is still a question.

On our way back through what was the central part of Manchester Street, I was told that last week men had been seen with new brooms, sweeping a bit of street that was otherwise piled high with debris.  Being surrounded by dereliction for the first time takes people in different ways.  They have to sort out new ways of being.  Sweeping seems an odd way to go though.

The overwhelming sense of dereliction in central Christchurch is hard to bear. It is a sad place that will take a long time to become enlivened once more. The humour that can be heard from those who are working in its midst sounds just a little hollow, but it is better than nothing.

Jo Nesbo

The article that follows first appeared a few weeks ago in The Press Weekend magazine.  Since then I have had the good fortune to act as the interlocuter in a public literary liaison with Jo Nesbo. On the basis of this experience, I would add that he is a fast-thinking, intense man with a good sense of humour who likes rock-climbing and tends to arrive for appointments either at the last moment or late.  And that the thing to bear in mind if and when you read 'Phantom', which you should, is that Harry Hole did not take off his bullet proof vest.

Phantom.  Jo Nesbo. 2012.  Harvill Secker (Random House).  Pp452. 

Ken Strongman

Viewed from almost any perspective, Jo Nesbo is a very creative, highly intelligent man.  It took him several years of exploring various avenues before he settled on writing.  In his teens, he thought that he would become a professional footballer.  Crook knees dashed this dream.  He joined the armed forces in northern Norway and while there completed sufficient study to gain entry to University.  He completed an economics degree, but also wrote rock songs and eventually had a rock band.  It was successful.  He became a stock broker, a career choice that would clearly not last.  He took six months off and wrote his first novel.  It was published to great success in Norway and he has now written  a dozen or so novels and sold over 11,000,000 books. 

This is phenomenal success.  He has now completed eight novels featuring detective Harry Hole, another crime novel ‘Headhunters’ (now made into a film to be released in New Zealand in March when Nesbo is visiting the country) and some children’s fiction. ‘Headhunters’, by the way, seems to divide readers.  It is interesting and well written, but to this reader suffers from the slight disappointment of not featuring Harry Hole.

Harry Hole is destined to become one of the great characters of crime fiction.

In the earlier novels, he was an inspector in the Norwegian police and happened to be the country’s most expert tracker of serial killers.  So, in spite of his total disrespect for authority (where this respect had not been earned or deserved) he had to be used by those same authorities if serial killers were involved.

Harry is tall, spikily blond and craggy, and in ‘The Leopard’ and now ‘Phantom’ has a severe scar down one side of his face.  He is intuitively brilliant, but like many great fictional detectives, he is also flawed.  He fights a constant battle with alcoholism, makes poor decisions in the tatters of his personal life and almost inevitably has some Scandinavian angst in his personality.  Of course, and again like all great fictional detectives, he has his own idiosyncratic brand of morality.  In other words, he is a maverick and in ‘Phantom’  he is functioning in a private capacity, no longer being in the police.  This is of course where mavericks belong, slightly outside the law.

Although each of the Harry Hole novels in translation (The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil’s Star, The Redeemer, The Snowman, The Leopard and now Phantom) stands alone, they follow on from one another as Harry’s life develops.  In ‘Phantom’ Harry returns to Oslo from South-East Asia, where he has been recovering from the physical ravages wrought by The Leopard and working as a sort of enforcer.  He is back because a young drug seller has been killed and the son of Harry’s ex-girl-friend, Rakel, has been arrested for the killing.

As Harry tries to make sense of what has happened, and of what in many ways is a new Oslo to him, so he re-establishes relationships with Rakel and with the few members of the Oslo police that can tolerate him.  This allows Nesbo to turn over the stone that conceals Oslo’s drug world, which is being run by a shadowy figure known as Dubai, but clearly of Russian pedigree.  The description of Harry’s progress is interspersed with the rambling thoughts of the dying druggy, and corruption in high places, including the police.  Meanwhile, the drug baron knows Harry is in Oslo and has set a trained assassin on his trail.

‘Phantom’ is slightly different from the other Harry Hole novels.  It begins more slowly and changes the vantage points of the writing more than the other novels.  It is perhaps slightly more ambitious.  The ambition is realized however, and the book is as satisfying as the others, in spite of a somewhat equivocal ending.

The Harry Hole novels are first-rate crime fiction.  Their plots are satisfyingly replete with twists, turns and surprises and show the genuine creativity, perhaps better described as maverick thinking, of the author.  There must be similarities between Nesbo and Hole (in fact, there are - a few).  The other characters are convincing and properly three-dimensional.  And the atmosphere that Nesbo manages to create in each of the books draws one in inexorably.  Norway and in particular Oslo are brought to life, bringing about disturbingly expensive thoughts of wanting to visit.

These books then, with ‘Phantom’ as no exception, are truly hard to put down.  They grip, they are sheerly enjoyable and they are very well written (in spite of being in translation from the Norwegian).  This is crime fiction of the highest order.

Comparisons should be made, particularly given the welcome proliferation in Scandinavian crime fiction.  In my view, Jo Nesbo is a better writer than Stieg Larsson.  Larsson’s Millenium trilogy tells a great story and he has created a wonderful character in Lizbeth, but Nesbo and Hole are simply better.   Nesbo and Hole even have it over Mankell and Wallendar for sheer enjoyment coupled with the keen creativity and intelligence that has gone into the writing.  Perhaps Australia’s Peter Temple comes close, but Melbourne is not Oslo and Jack Irish is not Harry Hole. 

If you like crime fiction you must read Jo Nesbo.

A touching affair

Sport used to be relatively impersonal, if one excludes wrestling and the various forms of football.  Even then the scrums, although sometimes vicious, were not to be taken personally.  And in soccer the only touches were in the form of 'fair' barges and a bit of shin-raking with the boot studs.  And in the individual sports such as those involving rackets, there might be a polite handshake at the end of hostilities, but nothing more.

Things have changed and at times the actual play seems merely to be an excuse for all manner of new types of touching.  Take doubles in tennis.  After EVERY point those on the same side of the net HAVE to touch.  It either takes the form of a low five or, more often with the men, a fist to fist touch - more manly of course.  Every point, win or lose.  At the end of the match things have not changed much.  It is mainly rather stiff-lipped smiles and hand-shakes and some air-kissing by the European women, plus the obligatory touching of the umpire's hand no matter how much invective has been aimed at him or her during the match.

In the team games, most sports now seem to have set up the business of each team lining up and everyone shaking the hand of everyone on the opposing team.  It can take an age and somehow seems to be part of the general crowd entertainment (songs, anthems, cheer-leaders and frantic dancers, and a surprising number of silent minutes).  They used to just get on and play.  In rugby and league they tend to go further than the hand-shake and do a hand-clasp and a man-hug with the other arm, somehow demonstrating that 'we might be tough but we are also sensitive new-age guys underneath'.  And even the scrums have become more personalised, although that one league player did take it too far a couple of years ago, poking a finger where very few would want it poked.

In soccer, the main attempts at manly touching happen after a goal is scored, which somehow suggests an element of surprise that it should have happened in spite of it being the point of the encounter.  Anyway, the major reaction of the goal-scorer is either to run around with arms outspread mimicking an aeroplane or to pull his shirt over his head and run around seemingly headless (this always seems strangely appropriate), or to run very fast and then slide along on this knees in front of the crowd.  One might be forgiven for thinking that these are all individual triumphant pursuits,  but they all culminate in most of the scorer's team-mates (excluding the goal-keeper who is too far away) running and jumping on on the scorer, the whole thing ending in a melee in which it seem limbs are more likely to be broken than in general play.

It's cricket though in which the most sophisticated and complex patterns of touch have been developed. A wicket always results in high-fives between the bowler and all of his team-mates who can get there.  Fair enough, the high-five is one of those little habits that we seem to have adopted from the American way.  But this is merely a prelude to the hair-roughing. They HAVE to do it even though at times with great difficulty - to see a one meter sixty-five batsman trying to reach the hair of a two meter bowler makes a nice image.

The only hugging that occurs with any regularity on the cricket field is between the batsmen.  If one scores a century or even a half-century, once he has completed his minor victory dance and saluted the crowd and those of his team-mates who are not reading or watching the tv, the other batsmen comes and gives him a big hug, a little more than the manly one-handed grip of the league players.

This is all quite ritualised, but what the cricketers have developed into an art-form is the bum-pat.  After every over, all of the bowler's team-mates that can get near him will give him a bum-pat.  Look as I might, I have not yet seen any reaction to this.  Nor have I seen one bowler do it to another, which may suggest what they think of it in general.  It is hard to know what exactly it means and how it developed, but cricket is a subtle and intricate game and no doubt the bum-pat will find its way into the rule book at some time.  I'm not sure whether it is allowed at Lords' or not.

It might be said that sport, like literature and art, reflects society.  Have we become more touchy in the last twenty years or so?  We probably have; there is certainly a lot more hugging goes on than used to, even between men - blame the Europeans.  Perhaps it won't be long before two men at the supermarket check-out exchange high fives to mark the successful conclusion of a basket-ful.  And there might be the odd occasion in daily life when the one-armed man hug is appropriate.  But the bum-pat in the office to mark the circulation of a well-expressed memo?  Probably not.