Tangled Web UK Review March 2003
Beggar's Banquet by
Ian Rankin
pbk out March 03
(Orion)
at £6.99
Beggars Banquet is a feast of short stories. Not least because it is not all
Inspector Rebus, and it covers about ten years of Rankin's output. The gastronomic
pleasure is in the sheer variety served up. If there is a theme, it is one of puzzles.
Appropriate then, that the collection starts with Trip Trap, relating a domestic crime that
Rebus (himself an enigmatic puzzle by name) solves with recourse to a crossword puzzle
clue incorrectly filled in by the murderer. Indeed most of the Rebus stories take the form
of some puzzle or another, in classic English crime style. And we have a liberal
sprinkling of Rebus stories, including the hard-to-find Death is not the End.
What refreshes this feast are the other tales though, often told from the
perspective of the perpetrator of crimes. In the story, Hanged Man, we get into the mind
of a paid killer who gets more than he bargained for when he confronts his latest victim –
a fortune-teller in a fairground booth. We get a lesson in how to deal with a dead body,
when the planned motorway excavation has been filled in too soon in Deep Hole. And of
course not all the criminals get caught when we look from their side of the fence. In
Video, Nasty Kenny manages quite successfully to do away with his best friend, pin the
murder on his wife, and end up with the girl. Isn't life just like that? Oh, and even here
the criminal mind is driven by puzzles. In Principles of Accounts, we lurk in the mind of
a kidnapper who hates puzzles. So when his last victim seems to be guiding the police
towards someone else for her kidnap, he is driven to solve the riddle, and place himself at
risk of being caught. Which is just what the police want.
Naturally, Rankin doesn't disappoint. These stories draw the reader in, tantalise
and mislead, before dealing the unexpected hammer blow at the tail. Like a Chinese
banquet, they amply fill the stomach with their rich sauces, and yet you can relish the fact
you will be left wanting more in an hour or two.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
New Books by Ian Rankin at Amazon.co.uk
Secondhand and Out of Print Books by Ian Rankin at Alibris.com
