Dead Souls by
Ian Rankin
hbk out February 99
Published by Orion
at £9.99
Rebus begins this novel by not wanting to be a cop any more. He is
without a sense of vocation, pessimistic about the role - the very
existence - of policing.
Just as well then, that his appeal for us is not as a policeman, but as
a human being. That he reflects for us, not our authoritarianism but our
humanity in all of its frailty and uncertainty.
Rankin quickly establishes several story-lines. Darren Rough is a
paedophile who Rebus wants to 'out' to his neighbours. Jim Margolies was
a cop who threw himself off Salisbury Crags - or did he? Damon Mee, a
teenager, has gone missing. And then there's Cary Oakes, multiple
murderer, shipped from a maximum-security prison in Walla Walla,
Washington - after serving fifteen years of a life sentence - back to
Edinburgh and Rebus's doorstep.
These story-lines are the outer landscape of Rebus's existence. His
inner world, however, is no less complicated. His real home is in his
memory, and in his continuing sense of regret at the course and outcome
of his life. He is in one sense an archetypal hero, the man who saves
the world instead of saving himself. But in another sense he is a tragic
figure, a man who escapes into the problems of the world, because he
cannot face his own reflection. A man who lives with a kind of
death-wish, who stubbornly refuses to lift a finger to help himself.
John Rebus constantly rails against his destiny. He is forever
wondering what it would have been if it had not been what it is. He puts
so much effort into denying the reality of his life, that his life has
little reality outside of his job. And the job itself is Janus-faced; he
doesn't like it and finds little in it to satisfy his soul, but it
offers him a picture of the intertwined destinies of other people, and,
ironically, a mirror for the tangled web of his own life.
It is tempting to speculate how much of Rebus reflects his creator's
own angst. There is certainly a strong sense in the subtext of this
novel that Ian Rankin would like to get his teeth into something much
more ambitious. Is the chosen form somehow, like an old suit, beginning
to pinch in places? I don't know the answer. Like I say, it is tempting
to speculate, but I'm going to resist it for the time being.
I suppose it would be over the top to expect Rebus to show some sense
of humour occasionally? Yet I often find myself wishing - halfway
through these novels - this one runs to over 400 pages - that he would
let himself go and have a good laugh at it all. There you go, Ian Rankin
- my wish list for Christmas - a belly-laugh from Rebus.
But we can't have it all. What we do have in the Rebus novels is a
series of books with real grit, a tormented soul who begins to mirror
the realities of our lives at the turn of the century, and a
fast-flowing, adaptive prose style that is up there with the best of
contemporary British writers.
This latest novel, Dead Souls, is a worthy addition to the previous
books in the series.
(
John Baker
- author of the Sam Turner mysteries and one of Britain's most highly acclaimed writers)
Dead Souls by
Ian Rankin