Rankin considers
Mortal Causes
to be a little outdated in as much as it looked at the IRA and its influence in Scotland. Maybe it was a tried and proven theme but the story was a good one and set to the backdrop of the Edinburgh Festival. Vanderhyde makes a cameo appearance and the concept of Sword and Shield is expanded.
Mortal
Causes
is a book full of religious tension between Catholics and Protestants. When an ordinary Edinburgh woman plucks up the courage to ask an Orangeman why they hate the Catholics, but rushes on before getting his response, we can appreciate how the people of Edinburgh hide their true feelings as easily as their macabre past at Mary King’s Close.
Mortal Causes
, like many Rankin novels, is subtle
and showcases how the author can deal with big topics in a sensitive way. Maybe, with reference to Northern Ireland, Rankin had some help from his wife whose family is Irish, because he thoroughly understood the nuances of the different organisations that cause unrest and despair by their acts of violence and terror. Rankin observes and then explores this similar mentality in Scotland through
Mortal Causes
. He has told me that one of the things he hates about his country is how the past dictates a prejudice against others – mainly the English – and how that tarnishes the here and now.
There is a lighter side to
Mortal Causes
: the Edinburgh Festival in full flow, the Fringe happening on the street and being enjoyed by the young Siobhan Clarke – and perhaps endured by the older John
Rebus, who seems to breathe a sigh of relief as the case ends at the same time as the Festival. The young and the old, history and the here and now, how the past influences the future: there are many avenues to explore in
Mortal Causes
and big questions to face. What is interesting is how Rankin does this without detriment to the story. He doesn’t give the reader a Bono-like diatribe: he plants
the seeds and lets you draw your own conclusion, while tying the story up nicely for you as his side of the bargain.
Rebus is totally absorbed in the case, as ever, almost ‘obsessive’ about it. Somebody has been murdered in Mary King’s Close. No ordinary murder. The victim had been six-packed (shot in the elbows, knees and ankles), a form of punishment typical of the IRA, Rebus knows, as he remembers
clearly his time in Ireland as part of the British Army. But unlike the IRA punishment, this six-pack was concluded with a bullet to the head.
Because he knows a little about the IRA, Rebus takes things as personally as usual – this is endearing to the reader but frustrating for the character.
‘“It’s about time the tourists learned the truth,” Rebus said…’
Mortal Causes
Although we observe
that Rankin is ‘obsessive’, he is not as destructive as Rebus. He lets his books absorb him, looking into the hidden depths of Edinburgh for more complex storylines. Rankin doesn’t possess the melancholy – the loneliness – of John Rebus but he does see the cynical truth behind the face of the Edinburgh Festival.
‘He … detested the Festival. It took away from them
their
Edinburgh and propped
something else in its place, a facade of culture which they didn’t need and couldn’t understand.’
Mortal Causes
Nowadays Rankin is an important figure at the Edinburgh Book Festival. He undertakes talks, solo or with other writers (such as Neil Gaiman in 2009 and Reggie Nadelson in 2010), and he meets the fans at book signings. In that respect, he has attached himself to part of the veneer
of the city but hell, you’ve got to have a bit of fun!
‘Curt got to his feet… “And now he’s gone to the other place.”
“It’s just a shot away,” said Rebus.’
Let It Bleed
R
ankin’s next novel was
Let It Bleed.
He describes it as a political novel. It is quite clear from the text that he wanted to mention changes in local politics in Scotland as a major theme, perhaps to take some of his ideas broached in
Strip Jack
further.
The story opens with a car chase towards the Forth Bridge in a blizzard. Rebus is more than a little concerned with his CI’s (Lauderdale’s) speed and when an accident occurs, it is his boss who is thrown through the windscreen. Rebus is unhurt apart from a toothache, which develops with the story!
What is life-changing for Rebus is his ex-girlfriend Gill Templer getting temporary promotion to
CI as a consequence of the crash. This is a surprise to Rebus and his colleague DI Alister Flower, as they think they are in line for promotion. Flower takes the news badly and conducts a swearing match with himself in the toilet as a consequence, while Rebus accepts that he is not promotion material and decides to congratulate Gill. She, it turns out, is less than gracious, mentioning that they
have no emotional connection any more. Rebus accepts this to begin with, but it seems that Gill has more problems dealing with their past than he does, to the extent where Rebus loses his temper over her attitude towards him (and for once, not without some justification).
As it turns out, the men have more problems adapting to a female boss than the women. Siobhan Clarke seems to have a spring
in her step with the sudden appearance of Gill Templer from Fife, but Rebus – who
should
be bothered – isn’t, because the problems are on Gill’s side, not his.
What is also significant in this story is, once more, Rebus’s relationship with his daughter Samantha. Towards the beginning of the book there is a very telling phone call from Sammy. Afterwards, Rebus chastises himself for not being fatherly
in his response to his daughter’s general questions. If only ‘life had a rewind button’, he muses. Rewind for the phone call, or his whole career as a father, is unclear. Probably the latter, but Rebus wouldn’t rate his whole influence on Sammy as poor.
There is a nice piece that concludes Part One of
Let It Bleed
. Rankin takes the most important characters in the story thus far and speculates
on how well they sleep at night. It’s a great summary of the characters, with Gill Templer ‘unperturbed’ and the missing girl ‘…’ (i.e. nobody knows). How was she sleeping? What type of sleep was it? Eternal? Rebus believes at one stage that she could have run away to London. It seems that ‘running away’ is a recurring theme in Rankin’s books, present ever since his first half-hearted efforts as
a boy.
‘Edinburgh was a lucky fucking town.’
Let It Bleed
Let It Bleed
is a revealing novel. When Rebus learns from Sammy that Patience’s cat was killed by a neighbour’s dog, he doesn’t just lack sympathy, he carries on with the reason he called in the first place. This is more than just inconsiderate, it’s Rebus being oblivious to the world that should matter most to him. Sammy had been
blamed for locking the cat-flap and she is terribly upset because she didn’t do it, but Rebus is wrapped up in the nuances of his line of inquiry and that sums up the whole reason why his relationships have failed him throughout his life.
There are two sides of the coin, of course. If Rebus wasn’t so single-minded when it came to work, some cases wouldn’t have been solved so quickly – especially
relevant for kidnap cases where there is a clear race against time. So is Rebus unselfish?
Not by any stretch of the imagination! He’s just totally dedicated – absorbed – by his work. And when that work is taken away? Ah, now that actually happens in
Let It Bleed.
The Farmer (Chief Superintendent Watson) tells Rebus to take ‘a week, ten days’ off. Not a formal suspension, but the next best thing.
Almost straight away Rebus becomes melancholy, believing that ‘police routine gave his daily life its only shape and substance.’ Does this imply that Rebus couldn’t – or wouldn’t – care much about personal relationships if he had the time? Possibly, but then: ‘He loathed his free time, dreaded Sundays off. He lived to work, and in a very real sense he worked to live, too…’ Shouldn’t this feeling
send warning bells through him – what preparations had he made for retirement? Did he
really
want to improve relationships with the women in his life? And if he didn’t, surely there was something there for his daughter?
Did Rebus care about her after the cat’s death? Not really. More interestingly, in a later book,
The Hanging Garden
, we find, in a flashback sequence, that he simply fell asleep
on a beach when he was meant to be looking after his baby daughter (but more about that later).
Do we learn more about Rebus’s personality in
Let It Bleed
, with regard to making a connection with Ian Rankin’s personality, that is?
Yes. Rankin was having fun with the character, cherry-picking little segments of his life and plopping them into the plot.
‘But when Rebus’s mother had been ill
that last time, she’d begged his father for release.’
Let It Bleed
We have already learnt of the death of Rankin’s mother when he was at university and, in a flashback scene, we experience an equally painful scene for young Rebus, where he endures the dying wishes of his mother. Rebus’s father is at odds with the whole thing, just as any other husband/father would be, but if we look at the
reality for Rankin’s father, it would be the second time he would lose his wife.
Although the scene in
Let It Bleed
is just a flashback, there is much emotion and one can’t help but make the comparison between reality and fantasy. We know that Rankin will use the odd image from his own life to colour the characters and situations he creates. It’s a natural thing for an author to do. But although
Rankin can make Rebus endure such a thing from his own past, he turns things round and plays with him, distancing himself from Rebus, because the way Rebus breaks the news to his daughter that she had inadvertently smuggled bounty money out of a prison and given it to a bounty hunter (thus causing somebody’s death) is less than tactful. In fact, it is stupid. But Rankin would have found that funny.
It’s part of the fun he has when writing a Rebus novel and part of the distancing he creates between him and Rebus.
Let It Bleed
is a good read, its political undertones are plausible and the way the powerful and influential scare the echelons of St Leonard’s is interesting, because they don’t scare Rebus!
Rebus immerses himself deeper into the spider’s web of political intrigue that is his
case. He is accused – in different ways – of being selfish, but he gets so absorbed in a case we can forgive him this, especially when it exposes everybody else as a bunch of spineless bastards. He becomes blinkered and when the war is over, he looks at the corpses scattered around him and thinks, Did I have something to do with that? He’s not totally guilty of being unfeeling, because he is not conscious
of it.
There is one major criticism of
Let It Bleed
: all the threads are pulled together without the reader being given the opportunity to do that for themselves. There is something a little Sherlock Holmes-like, or maybe Poirot-like, in the way Rebus sounds off to the all-powerful at the end of the novel. You are made to feel that Rebus is being deliberately too speculative but it turns out
he isn’t. There are certain things he wouldn’t know and to chance his hand as much as he does is a sure-fire liberty on the wrapping up of the story.
Ultimately,
Let It Bleed
showcases how perceptive Rebus is, but you do question that perception because you couldn’t work it out yourself. Being in a big room full of suspects, there is something Agatha Christie/Conan Doyle-like in the revelatory
summing up, which again echoes great novels past. But aside from this,
Let It Bleed
was a very good book and a worthy follow-up to
The Black Book
and
Mortal Causes.
‘Sammy gave him a good luck kiss as he left the flat.
“We’re not so very different,” she told him.’
Let It Bleed
Let It Bleed
is a deeper book than its predecessors. The main characters are more complex, the supporting cast
– especially tattooed thug Rico Briggs and smack-head rich kid Kirstie Kennedy – are both visual and engaging, but we find out a little more about Rebus too.
Returning to the theme of selfishness for a moment, there is an interesting point in the book where the Farmer tells Rebus – to his face – that he is selfish. He explains that he has had a bad weekend fielding scorn from certain dignitaries
Rebus had been pestering in his investigations, especially when Rebus was meant to be taking a break (unofficial suspension). Perhaps Rebus feels bullied. He was, after all, only trying to do his job, but even Gill Templer thinks he had approached things the wrong way. She’s worried for him, believing that he could lose his job by getting too involved with such important people, but that disappears
with the outburst: ‘I’m your immediate superior! I’m in the post barely a week, and already you’ve caused the most unholy ructions.’ Templer still has feelings for Rebus, albeit suppressed, but she has now experienced how awkward he can be on a case for his superiors, and it is up to her to decide if she wants to continue putting up with a man who gets the job done well, but at certain – sometimes
personal – costs.
Rebus is not an easy man to deal with, let alone like or love. He is a maverick, a loner, a lateral thinker who short-circuits the system and gets results. Because of all that he is frustrating and people have to pick up the pieces, but he gets results that others can’t.
Moving away from the character of Rebus for a moment, there is a complex and political storyline in
Let
It Bleed
, which builds and gives little away until the end of the novel.
Rankin is not an overtly political writer – well, certainly not in the early days – but when he did tackle the theme there was always a blue-tinge to his collar (working class not Conservative), which quite naturally stems from his formative years. He understands the human grief and suffering behind large chunks of Scottish
industry closing down, such as the mines in Fife, Rosyth Dockyard, the list goes on. Indeed, this political sub-theme is expanded in Rankin’s following novel
Black and Blue
: underhand dealings to rebuild Scotland’s industry, as seen in
Let It Bleed
. Also, Rankin was a much more confident and competent writer at the time of writing
Let It Bleed
. Loyal readers knew what to expect from the Rebus
series now and Rankin knew what he wanted to deliver.