In a new introduction, Ian Rankin
explains that he didn’t know Detective Sergeant John Rebus was to become such a
huge fictional figure going on to star in more than a dozen novels. He notes
his rookie errors in giving Rebus a complex back story and knowledge about
things he might not have known (art and literature), combined with lack of
understanding of things that he should, such as police procedure.
There is more than an element of
Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse about Rebus as Rankin is keen to show off his
education with mixed metaphors and a classical background. “The skies were as
dark as a Wagnerian opera, dark as a murderer’s thoughts.” He has faith, but
does not hold with organised religion and he reads his Bible for comfort. “Ah,
but it was not a nice world this, not a nice world at all. It was an Old
Testament land that he found himself in, a land of barbarity and retribution.”
Rebus is patronising towards ideological
students; needing to disassociate himself from others’ language; to prove himself
better than that (he reads Dostoevsky’s Crime
and Punishment, don’t you know), he positions himself above the students
who come into ‘his’ city. “Edinburgh was all appearances, which made the crime
less easy to spot, but no less evident. Edinburgh was a schizophrenic city, the
place of Jekyll & Hyde sure enough, the city of Deacon Brodie, of fur coat
and no knickers (as they said in the west).”
Much is made of the city’s
underside, hidden from the tourists and the students, but known to the likes of
him. Rankin has created this world and he is proud of its darkness. As it
becomes clear there is a criminal delighting in killing girls and taunting
Rebus, many are shaken that this occurs in the Scottish capital. “But here, in Edinburgh! It’s unthinkable. Mass
murderers belonged to the smoky back streets of the South and the Midlands, not
to Scotland’s picture-postcard city.”
Rebus has a secret past – of course
he does; he was a Para and trained for the SAS with a special Crack Assignments
group. He has buried his SAS experience
in his subconscious, but it is clearly important to the case he finds himself
investigating. Indeed, there are so many references and near flash-backs that the
reader knows this trauma has something to do with the crime, even if he doesn’t.
When he decides to delve into his subconscious, it is no surprise that the mind
is a deep and curious place, with many layers, just like Edinburgh itself.
As well as being firmly fixed in
place, Rankin sets his novel in a particular time, where pubs served different
measures, and computers and digitisation are new. Rebus’s colleague tells him
that the time is coming when all files will be on computers and work-horses
like him will be obsolete. “It’s progress, John. Where would be without it? We’d
still be out there with our pipes and our guess-work and our magnifying
glasses.”
Unfortunately, another thing that
anchors this novel in its time is the casual sexism and portrayal of women. Gill
Templar is suspected of being a “ball-crusher” because she has opinions and
stands up for herself, although she has appallingly unnatural dialogue. When she
inevitably has sex with Rebus she is described less as a woman than as a doll. “She
smelt good, like a baby on a fireside towel. He admired the shapes of her
twisted body as they awoke to the thin, watery sunlight. She had a good body
all right. No real stretch-marks. Her legs unscarred. Her hair just tousled enough
to be inviting.” At least she fares better than another woman he picks up, who
is written more like a cow in a herd than a human individual with thoughts and
feelings.
