Think of Edinburgh in novel form, and you're probably thinking of either Irvine Welsh's gritty realism in Trainspotting or Ian Rankin's troubled DI John Rebus in the series of the same name. While I have a lot of time for Welsh's work, I'll probably always be thinking of Rebus first, as his inaugural outing was as far back as 1987's Knots and Crosses, while Renton, Begbie and the others were first seen in 1993. Regardless, we can safely say that Ian Rankin was writing about crimes in Scotland long before Scotland was cool.
While Rankin is justifiably lauded for his Rebus novels, he experienced the same dilemma that many novelists with a long-running series character do - namely, what to do with all the other interesting plot ideas that Rebus simply couldn't investigate. Therefore, 2007's Exit Music was intended to be Rebus' swansong, and 2009 saw the debut of Malcolm Fox, a member of "Complaints and Conduct" (or "Professional Standards and Ethics") in Rebus' old Lothian and Borders Police. The Complaints, as the department is known, and as the first Fox novel is titled, are hardly the most popular section of any police department, as they need to investigate the police themselves.
Fox is therefore able to conduct investigations - and get into situations - that Rebus would never be able to. It's a strange change of gears in a way, as much of the visceral power of Rebus as a character comes from his willingness to skirt around inconvenient procedures to get his result (he famously has a method for "the perfect Scottish murder", taking advantage of the high fat and oil content of the typical Edinburgh diet), and suddenly the reader needs to identify with someone unambiguously on the side of good.
That said, I believe that most authors who write police-procedural crime will eventually find themselves dabbling in "internal affairs"-style plots. The temptation for double- and triple-crossing as well as all manner of high crimes and misdemeanours is simply too great.
2011's The Impossible Dead is Malcolm Fox's second outing, and begins with Fox and his team - including junior partners Naysmith and Kaye - looking to round up some loose ends in an investigation in Kirkcaldy. Detective Paul Carter has been all but drummed out of the force due to sexual assault charges, and Fox's team has been sent in from Edinburgh to establish whether perjury charges need to be laid against any of Carter's colleagues.
The case is made more complicated by the unwillingness of anyone in Kirkcaldy to co-operate. Fox's team are outsiders, as well as being the despised "Complaints", and Carter was seen as a man who got things done, regardless of exact method. Additionally, the evidence against Carter came from his uncle - a former policeman himself - and this seems to cast things in a very negative light indeed for many being investigated.
As the team investigates - stepping on toes in the best Rankin fashion - the plot proceeds to thicken. Carter's uncle is found dead, seemingly shot by a gun which "shouldn't exist", and Fox is constantly drawn to obscure political events in the mid-1980s when fringe Scottish Nationalists attempted to press their case in the same way that the IRA was in Ireland. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the body count continues to rise, and Fox finds himself having to investigate crimes which may have had their origin in complicated political plotting in London.
All of this should add up to an impressive plot, and on paper it does. Ultimately, though, it just seems to fall flat. The unravelling of conspiracies within conspiracies seems to rely very heavily on coincidence and the sudden arrival of characters who are introduced without any real logic (one suspect is never given a physical description until after the investigators start wondering if he fits the one given by a witness, which seems either unfair or the result of poor editing). Fox, for example, manages to work out the identity of two key figures in the 1980s plot in the exact same way, but several chapters apart. While the method itself (the sudden inspiration one has when falling asleep) is plausible, the fact that it happens twice smacks of lazy plotting to me.
It's also clear that the plot Rankin wanted to write was his 1980s-terrorism one. The uncle-and-nephew-cops plot keeps vanishing from the pages almost entirely, only for Naysmith or Kaye to appear by phone and recount exhaustive detail of an interview or further evidence, often dealing with events several chapters ago. Given that Rebus has (in 2002's Resurrection Men) investigated an old cold case, it's not entirely clear why this had to be Fox's case, either, except perhaps that Rankin needed a break from Rebus.
There are a couple of the almost requisite scenes of Fox being "warned off", but these don't seem to have any of the menace such a scene should. Even the climax of the novel relies on a relatively obvious trick Fox plays on a suspect, which dissipates at least some of the tension.
The net result is that what could well have made a cracking read at about 200-300 pages winds up being rather bloated at more than 420. Justice is, at least to a certain point, served by the end of the novel, but it's hard to get too worked up about the "baddies" losing out, as every major character outside of Fox's team doesn't seem as "real" as they otherwise might.
My other concern with the Malcolm Fox novels is Fox himself. It's almost as if Rankin wanted to create an "anti-Rebus", by having Fox as almost the archetypically "good cop". We learn that he studied well at school, has been a high-flyer in the force (one has to be to get into "The Complaints"), doesn't drink and tries to take care of his sister and aged father as best he can. His only character flaw seems to be a short-lived marriage which fell apart due to both of them focusing too hard on their careers. In contrast to the hard-drinking, trouble-causing Rebus with his complicated personal entanglements, Fox is just too anodyne to work as a series character. Even the attempt to give Fox a "troubled sister" doesn't seem to work, as Rankin doesn't appear keen to give Jude a backstory.
This isn't to say that the "good cop" is automatically boring. Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti is anything but a bad cop, but at least is willing to bend regulations when required. Fox launches into any amount of existential doubt when he does so, and Rankin seems happy to allow him the "out" of getting Naysmith or Kaye to actually do the wrong thing when required.
I feel, too, that the other issue with Fox is that he's introduced to us as a complete character. Rebus, over 17 novels and any number of short stories, grew into a well-rounded human being. Fox just appears in his first novel, without any of the hang-ups that a distinguished police career would normally give someone. A character cut from the whole cloth like that is going to be harder to appreciate, and it feels like a misstep.
Finally, it also feels that the sense of place is missing here. Much of this investigation takes place in and around Kirkcaldy, as against The Complaints which was in Edinburgh. With the exception of the occasional reference to Scotland (or Fox's father ending the novel with the toast "Here's tae us, wha's like us? Gey few, and they're a' deid"), we could really be anywhere. Yes, there's a Scottish political subplot, but Rankin doesn't seem to have captured any local flavour in this. Peculiarly, though, this may well be the first Rankin novel in which British politics is mentioned - David Cameron and his coalition with Nick Clegg are expressly name-checked near the end.
All in all, this is hardly Rankin's best work. The good news is that by 2012, Rankin had decided to bring Rebus back (alongside Fox).
For completists. Two stars.
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