Ian Rankin & Inspector Rebus

by Craig Cabell

  So memories, memories, memories: Rebus visits his old school friend and finds that he has married one of Rebus’s old flames, a woman who appears more beautiful now than when she was younger and represents to him what could have been if they had got together. But Rebus – ever cynical – feels in his heart that it wouldn’t have worked out. More memories, memories, memories but then present-day reality, for it is her son that Rebus is looking for: a lost person. And sometimes a lost person is never found and that is a fate worse than death for the people left behind. Do they mourn? Do they continue the search? Where does it end? Should it end?

  ‘The street was dead. He reached up and hauled himself over the iron railings and walked a circuit of the cemetery for an hour or so, and felt strangely at peace.’

  Death Is Not The End

  There is ‘an echo in the bone’, as Diana Gabaldon would call it. And one can sense that mixture of ghosts, souls – both living and dead – in Rankin’s novella, all of them lost and yearning for salvation.

  Rankin tries to tackle some big themes in Death Is Not The End. It was based upon a conversation he had with a friend, Otto Penzler, and the theme of vanishing, but as usual the idea grew into a more socially aware thriller – perhaps too big an idea for a novella, as missing persons is a sensitive area for many families all over the UK and can’t be dealt with in 80 pages. There are many websites and helplines which try to help people locate loved ones who, on some occasions, just get up and leave for work and are never seen again. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) Missing Person Bureau (MPB) is one such organisation that ‘works alongside the police and related organisations to improve the services provided to missing persons investigations and increase effectiveness’.52 So a very serious subject and perfect for Rankin’s dark Edinburgh, but so underused in the novella and crying out for novel-length exploration.

  The novella was important in highlighting one theme that fascinates Rankin: the people who pop in and out of one’s life. The Rebus series has many characters who do this in the main character’s life and in Death Is Not The End, while sitting in his car outside a cemetery, Rebus contemplates this. He thinks about his parents and stories about the neighbouring village of Bowhill: mining tragedies, a girl found dead in a river (see The Flood), a 20-something football star whose life was too short. There is melancholy throughout the Rebus series, as if all the characters are hiding their inner sadness, their own personal struggle in life, from the world around them. Rankin says that people in Edinburgh keep themselves to themselves and that is something that really comes through in the books. Rebus certainly doesn’t like people getting too close to him, not physically but mentally. People have done so in the past. His old school pal’s wife was close to Rebus and when she asks him to go to a dance with her and her husband – which he declines – there is more being suggested by the author than meets the eye.

  When Rebus leaves them and starts to contemplate his life, we can detect a strong analogy between the Rebus series and Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time series. ‘The structure of that book is interesting,’ Rankin explained. ‘Five years and five books apart you can have a character come in you vaguely remember… and these people keep coming back into your life. Powell said it’s very much like a dance, and that’s what the Rebus books are like 53 and that’s what life is like.

  Is that important for a series such as Rebus? ‘I think so,’ Rankin says.’ I find characters that I used books ago that will be useful to me again. It’s important to keep a whole life [Rebus’s] in my head.’54

  In the Afterword to Death Is Not The End Rankin admits that he ‘cannibalised’ part of the story for a sub-plot in his next novel Dead Souls (Orion, 1999). Some would argue that he did slightly more than this, but it doesn’t matter – Rankin had an obligation to a larger story and the fulfilment of that obligation made one of his most popular Rebus novels.

  Dead Souls would include some of the same characters and theme as Death Is Not The End, with Brian Mee getting back in touch with Rebus to find his missing son, but then things get much more complex. A paedophile and a vigilante appear, and putting them against the backdrop of Edinburgh bodes for a very dark outing for Rebus. The opening of the novel is a strong and dark one: there is a menacing visual image of Edinburgh Castle atop its ‘volcanic plug’, followed by a dark scene at Arthur’s Seat with a man – Rebus? – contemplating a headless coach-driver waiting for him, but left with the prospect that he’ll never see his daughter again. Deep metaphors indeed. Edinburgh’s Hyde clearly depicted in a page and a half, the perfect opener for a macabre story. ‘I’m always attracted to the dark side,’ Rankin says.55‘Living as I had done in a succession of dreary flats, motels and high-rise blocks, yet researching my PhD each day in the grand surroundings of the National Library and Central Library, Edinburgh really did seem a divided city to me.’56

  Rankin harks back to his university days and shows clearly that the use of gothic imagery is important to describing the underbelly of Edinburgh, like Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and like the work of James Hogg. At the beginning of Dead Souls (along with Stevenson’s The Body Snatchers), Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) claims an important influence. It’s as though Rankin finds it hard to write without the heady influence of Edinburgh’s former writers, something he sort of confessed in an Evening News interview: ‘I owe a great debt to Robert Louis Stevenson and to the city of his birth. In a way they both changed my life. Without Edinburgh’s split nature, Stevenson might never have dreamt up Jekyll and Hyde.’ And without Jekyll and Hyde, Rankin might not have come up with his ‘alter ego detective’ as he so readily admits when discussing both Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek. But what does all of this tell us? Rankin needs the large canvas of a novel to fully explore an idea. A novella or a short story isn’t big enough. Edinburgh itself has to be a backdrop to Rebus’s work: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, indeed anywhere else, is a respite from the true exploration that Rankin is going through with the books. And what is that? Answer: adding to the catalogue of Scottish writers and Scottish writing, making sense of Scotland’s capital city and sharing his memories while analysing the multi-faceted character of his long-running detective – John Rebus.

  Dead Souls, like Mortal Causes, digs deep into what lies beneath Edinburgh’s veneer. It also shows clearly that the novella and short story don’t give Rankin the opportunity – in theme or word count – to analyse the big questions he asks himself before putting finger to keyboard. Dead Souls was the novel Death Is Not The End should have been, but Edinburgh was missing and the lost lad had to call home.

  Unfortunately, Rebus’s problems with personal relationships continue, so he finds solace in his paperwork and the promise of a cup of tea. Well, that’s the gist of Death Is Not The End – what about Dead Souls? The ghost of Jack Morton is in Rebus’s dreams and a part-time poisoner is terrorising the local zoo where Rebus finds Darren Rough, a known paedophile. Then there’s Cary Oakes, a US serial killer who decides to settle down in Edinburgh. Rebus’s old foe, journalist Jim Stevens, gets drawn into Oakes’ world and is suitably embarrassed, and then there’s the sub-plot of Janice and Brian and their teenage missing son and Janice’s need for the Ghost of Rebus Past.

  The larger canvas of Dead Souls is far more satisfying than the preceding novella, and the various threads are worked through methodically to their natural conclusions, which are more melancholy than satisfying. Souls are laid to rest while living people remain haunted by what has happened to them, both through the course of the book and, before then, in their own pasts.

  My only observation about Rankin writing a novel based upon one of his novellas is that perhaps by doing so (i.e. having a sub-plot already clear in his mind) he had too much time to write the novel and put far too many players into it along with other main and sub-themes.

  Dead Souls isn’t a book you can drop in and out of. There’s too much going on in it. Is this a criti
cism? Possibly. Indeed when I speak to Rankin about his favourite books in the series, it’s mainly Knots and Crosses, Hide and Seek, Let It Bleed and Black and Blue that get top billings. That said, there’s a lot of reference in Rebus’s Scotland to Dead Souls, which suggests it’s a pivotal work in Rankin’s understanding of Edinburgh and Rebus. Edinburgh is a city with a lot of hustle and bustle and with Dead Souls, Rankin created a story that reflected the brutality of the city, that would expose the corruption that lies beneath and go a long way to achieving the ultimate goal of the series. Black and Blue picked up many plaudits, but Dead Souls took the series further by getting to grips with one of the major themes: Edinburgh (Black and Blue was an out-of-town novel and couldn’t do that). Also, with regard to Black and Blue, Siobhan was almost an afterthought, which is something quite unusual for the series; Rankin really picked on Rebus in that novel and simply left Siobhan alone.

  So finally we understand that Dead Souls is more of an important novel to the Rebus series than one initially thinks. It has less power as a stand-alone novel: it’s more of the corporate glue of the series. Rankin almost acknowledges this by failing to list it amongst his favourites but quoting from it heavily in Rebus’s Scotland.

  All series need a book that pulls themes together. J K Rowling had to do it in Harry Potter (The Half-Blood Prince) and Anthony Powell did it constantly in Dance to the Music of Time. Also, Rebus is a reflective character: perhaps it goes with the job, but memories make the man. It’s not a new theme or idea. Charles Dickens wrote a whole Christmas novella about the concept of a man – a chemist called Redlaw – having his pain/melancholy taken away from him. In Dickens’ The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (Chapman and Hall, 1848) Redlaw turns into a bitter, hard, cold man as a consequence. Redemption happens when Redlaw’s memories are restored and the moral of the story comes through: Redlaw was a better man for carrying his pain – his humility. Perhaps the same can be said for Rebus.

  ‘Rebus hadn’t thought of himself as the kind to spend long nights with the family album, using it as a crutch to memory, always with the fear that remembrance would yield to sentiment.’

  Death Is Not The End

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A SHORT INTERLUDE

  ‘“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.’

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’ from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

  So Rankin can only use Rebus in the medium of a novel? For the ongoing exploration of Edinburgh, yes, because only by using the larger canvas can Rankin tackle Rebus, Edinburgh and the multi-layered story. Of course, there have been some good short Rebus stories but they add little to the overall life-story of Rebus – well, apart from the odd snippet: ‘He [Rebus] could not escape the fact that he had been born a Protestant; but his mother, a religious woman, had died young, and his father had been indifferent.’

  The above segment from ‘Seeing Things’ (A Good Hanging and other stories – the first Rebus anthology of short stories) could echo Rankin’s own life but it’s just an echo, a minute piece of story that isn’t taken further because the medium of the short story doesn’t allow it.

  Turning to A Good Hanging and other stories, the one thing I do detect in stories such as ‘Playback’, ‘The Dean Curse’ and ‘The Gentlemen’s Club’ (to name but three) is Rebus’s anger, which is normally pointed towards the more privileged classes – well, that’s where we see it at its fiercest. Conversely, when others take the words of a down-and-out with a pinch of salt (‘Being Frank’), Rebus remembers something the character says and stops a burglary in his very own block of flats! So the anthology of Rebus stories perhaps allows us to appreciate Rebus’s little quirks more fully by their repetition – consistency – of feelings over a dozen or so short stories.

  There are a few returning characters in the short stories, such as London-based counterpart George Flight (Tooth and Nail) who becomes a useful contact. But what I find interesting in the story ‘A Good Hanging’ is Brian Holmes’ assessment of himself in comparison to Rebus. He considers himself two steps behind the great detective (almost a Watson, not a Holmes), but then remembers that there was a character better than him at school and he finally overtook him. Was this Rankin’s way of telling the audience that Brian was moving on? Maybe not, but perhaps short fiction allowed Rankin to study some of the minutiae of the ever-broadening series, the lives of some of the secondary characters and what was happening to them.

  Moving away from the content of the stories, Rankin admits that he rarely has time to write short fiction nowadays. Sometimes after completing a novel he will write one or two but it’s not something he dedicates much time to. This is probably because there isn’t the same market for anthologies of short stories as there is for novels. It’s a fact that astonishes him, as he thought city-dwellers at least would find short stories more user friendly because they can be easily read while travelling on a bus or tube, but in reality it doesn’t work out that way. Commuters – the general readers – wish to know what the grand theme of a novel is and take their time going through it. It is a more preferable pastime than taking 12 to 15 smaller undisclosed themes in an anthology of short stories. In short, the reader wants something they can get their teeth into and lose themselves in the unreality of the ongoing story.

  This probably explains why there have been only two anthologies of Rebus stories, A Good Hanging and other stories and Beggars Banquet (that’s not including The Complete Short Stories with its bonus story).

  So can we say that Ian Rankin, a prize-winning short story writer, hasn’t really shown his true potential in the sub-genre of short stories? Of course not. There have been some excellent Rebus short stories, ‘Sunday’, ‘Herbert in Motion’ and the fun ‘No Sanity Clause’ to name but three, but there does seem to be something ephemeral about the whole idea of the short story nowadays that makes it a lesser work. Gone are the days of Conan Doyle and the next riveting issue of The Strand Magazine, featuring the next exciting adventure of Sherlock Holmes.

  At the turn of the 20th century the public didn’t really know if a short story or a novel featuring one of their favourite characters would be serialised next, but because they were buying a periodical it didn’t really matter. They enjoyed being surprised. Nowadays, with life at a faster pace, the ordinary punter wants to read the jacket blurb of a book and understand what they are spending their time and money on – they either sign up to it or they don’t. The same can be said for television and a good example of that is the science fiction show Dr Who. In the 1960s when William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton took the main role, the average story length was six episodes. That was six consecutive weeks of 25-minute episodes. Nowadays the Doctor has to sort the universe out in one 50-minute episode. Only occasionally – when a gripping foe can capture the audience – will a story span two episodes. People will sign up to the ready-made meal and spend their money accordingly. It’s all about packaging, understanding what the consumer wants. They’ll sit there for 50 minutes and watch TV, but rarely will they want to follow the same story in bite-sized chunks over several weeks. Likewise, they don’t want many different stories in one book with no overall pay-off: they need something to get their teeth into.

  Perhaps Rankin should write a lengthy anthology of short stories, build them up over the next six or seven years and release a heady tome. Maybe that way, without the constraints of Rebus being in them all, will he win the short story battle. If the anthology has an overall theme, say Edinburgh, exploring a multitude of different lifestyles and events, will he come somewhere close to a diverse novel-type of theme. It could be a very interesting – and perhaps humorous way – of seeing Rebus in retirement (through one or two stories).

  Am I implying by all of this that Rebus has stifled Rankin’s creativity? That he has taken Rankin away from more important work, like She
rlock Holmes did to Conan Doyle? Maybe I am, as far as Rebus has stopped Rankin from making more diverse fiction or, at least, having the opportunity of writing more diverse fiction. But who is to say that whatever else Rankin would have written during the Rebus years would have been any better? Were the Jack Harvey novels? Doors Open? In honesty, it’s difficult to tell – I would personally think not, but it’s subjective. What we can say is: the 20 years of Rebus-related writings was excellent, we enjoyed the ride, and isn’t that what it’s all about eventually? Of course it is. That and the fact that Rankin is not as an ungrateful father to Rebus as Conan Doyle was to Sherlock Holmes!

  ‘“If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roof, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”’

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A Case of Identity’ from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  YOU GOT THE SILVER

  ‘There is nothing I think very exceptional in my situation as a mental worker. Entanglement is our common lot.’

  Experiment in Autobiography, Being the Autobiography of H G Wells

  The Hanging Garden is one of the most underrated novels in the Rebus series. We first encounter our hero saying goodbye to his daughter after a pizza. His obvious affection for her in juxtaposition to the manacles of his job is clear: they have cancelled their dinner appointment many times because of his calls to duty, but she understands and he is grateful for that. Rebus knows he doesn’t see her enough but he’s pleased that she has a level of self-confidence – independence – and is building her life normally with a boyfriend and no apparent mental scars after the break-up of the parental home. There is a sense of relief and gratitude in Rebus’s attitude before he gets entangled straight away with a surveillance-gone-wrong and a gangland hospital case!