10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) (243 page)
Read 10 Great Rebus Novels (John Rebus) Online
Authors: Ian Rankin
Rebus is ordered to take some time off. How does Ian Rankin detail his response? What happens to Rebus’s ‘Protestant work ethic’?
What lesson does Rebus learn at the hands of Rico Briggs?
Why don’t Wee Shug’s actions in the surgery make sense to Rebus?
How lucky is Lucky?
Rebus feels that this case draws on connections and coincidences. Could the same be said for Ian Rankin’s intricate plotting in
Let It Bleed?
‘
That’s your problem, Inspector – you’re selfish, no other word for it. I think you know damned well that these obsessions of yours end up damaging everyone around you, friend, foe and civilians alike
.’ Do these words from the Farmer strike a chord with Rebus, or does he brush them aside?
Ian Rankin says that in some ways
Let It Bleed
is a return to the Scotland of his second novel,
Hide & Seek
. Would you agree?
Does
Let It Bleed
, as Ian Rankin claims, ‘celebrate our national relationship with alcohol’? If so, what is the reader supposed to make of Rebus’s signs of alcoholism? Why does
he
believe he drinks? And what does Rebus actually feel about his excessive drinking?
Is much of what Rebus discovers really a crime, or could it be considered instead just a sharp way of doing business?
The US edition has a different ending that ties up some of the loose ends, although this alternative dénouement isn’t offered here. What are the loose ends left hanging? And do they worry the reader?
Contents
O would, ere I had seen the day
That treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay,
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I’ll mak’ this decleration;
We’re bought and sold for English gold –
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
‘Fareweel to a’ Our Scottish Fame’
If you have the Stones . . . to say I can rewrite history to my own specifications, you can get away with it.
(Capitalisation the author’s own)
INTRODUCTION
Late December 1996. After six years in France, I was back living in Edinburgh, renting a house. Problem was, the owners, who lived most of the year in London, needed it for Christmas. As a result, we were temporarily homeless. We’d spent Christmas itself with my wife’s family in Belfast, and were spending New Year with friends in Cambridge. An aunt in Bradford could put us up for a few days, as could my nephew in Lincolnshire. After Bradford, we dropped in on friends near York. It was while resting at their house that I read in
The Times
a teaser for a book review. It went something along the lines of ‘the best crime novel of 1997 has already been written – discover its identity next week’. My latest book was due for publication towards the end of January, so I kept my fingers crossed and bought
The Times
on the appointed day.
The reviewer was Marcel Berlins; sure enough, the novel he had flagged up was
Black & Blue
.
He wasn’t wrong, either – when November came round, my eighth Inspector Rebus adventure picked up the Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel published in 1997. It went on to be shortlisted for the American equivalent, the Edgar (named after Edgar Allan Poe – I lost out to James Lee Burke), and also won Denmark’s Palle Rosenkrantz Prize. Eventually it would end up on the school syllabus in Scotland, and a lecturer at St Andrews University would publish a book-length critique of its themes.
So what the hell is it that made
Black & Blue
so different from my previous efforts?
Well, for one thing, the book looked different. My publishers, Orion, had found a spooky photo of some trees, and had added a new, bold typeface to the cover, making
Black & Blue
look
more
than a crime novel. They were also prepared to put some muscle into promoting the book, with posters and advertisements. But more than this, to my mind the book was simply bigger and better than my previous work: I felt I’d served my apprenticeship. It was as if all the previous Rebus novels had been leading to this. I would no longer confine my detective to Edinburgh and its environs. He would visit Glasgow, Aberdeen, Shetland – even an oil installation hundreds of miles out in the unforgiving North Sea. Oil would be a theme of the book, allowing me to examine Scotland’s industrial decline and reshaping. Difficult to discuss oil without bringing politics into the equation, so the book would be political too. And Rebus would swell in stature. I would put his reputation, career and life on the line. I’d have intertwined narratives, with various sub-plots dodging in and out of the main story.
And I would do all this while using as my backdrop a series of real-life unsolved murders from thirty years before – and bringing that killer into the books as a character. Almost a decade on, I still think this an audacious ploy. And Bible John has yet to sue me for libel.