"Rebus Is Back" reads the cover of my edition of Rankin's 2012 novel, and back he most certainly is. The most famous member of the Lothian and Borders police - having apparently been retired after 2007's Exit Music - is once again investigating crimes.
The question of how to deal with the age of a series character is one which a number of novelists have had to address, particularly with the rise in popularity of policemen as protagonists. Rankin has admitted in the past that he genuinely didn't expect John Rebus to prove as popular as he has, which meant that with every case he investigated, he drew closer to mandatory retirement age.
In Rankin's favour, simply "retiring" a character is probably a less controversial move than what must still rate as the most infamous attempt at ending a series - Conan Doyle's dramatic scene involving Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty throwing each other off the Reichenbach Falls - as such an act required rather a bit of "un-doing" when popular sentiment demanded Holmes' return, courtesy of a very hasty explanation or two.
Agatha Christie, too, faced a similar difficulty with her two most famous sleuths. Hercule Poirot had already left the Belgian police by the time he investigated The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and by some counts must have been well past his hundredth birthday by the time of Curtain, his final case. Miss Marple's indeterminate (but still advanced) age may have saved her from the same fate that befalls Poirot, whose faculties are failing him, but it is important to note that the final adventures of both detectives were written much earlier than they were published. Rankin hasn't had this luxury, at least that we know of.
In between Exit Music and Grave, Rankin gave us two novels featuring Malcolm Fox. The Impossible Dead I've reviewed previously and - in a break with my usual custom - I'll go back to re-read The Complaints shortly, as I genuinely feel that it's only with Rebus that Rankin's imagination shines through.
Grave begins - appropriately enough - at the funeral of one of Rebus' former colleagues. On his return from the gravesite, Rebus hears a song by one of his favourite singers which appears to feature the lyric "Standing in another man's grave", only to be a mondegreen for "another man's rain". This mishearing prompts Rebus to wonder about his hearing and his age in general, which may well rate as one of Rankin's few concessions to his character's age.
Rebus, we learn, has found work as a civilian member of Lothian and Borders' Cold Case Unit, a team staffed by former police still with a strong desire to contribute to the force they were forced to retire from. Fans of the television series New Tricks will doubtless recognise the general outline of the place, although the strongly career-oriented leader of his team is perhaps an invention from the whole cloth.
The unit looks to be on borrowed time, with the decision having been taken to centralise cold-case investigations. While this is a clear signal to Rebus' colleagues that full retirement is the next step, Rebus himself is aware that the mandatory retirement age has recently been increased, and is looking to rejoin the police for another few years, much to the chagrin of his supervisor and former colleagues.
By chance, Rebus is contacted by Nina Hazlitt, a woman whose daughter disappeared during the Millennium celebrations and who is certain that a list of seemingly-unconnected disappearances are linked. It emerges that another such disappearance took place only a matter of weeks ago, and the investigation has been assigned to none other than Rebus' old protege Siobhan Clarke and her colleagues at Rebus' old stamping ground of Gaythorne Square.
Despite the reservations of a number of Clarke's team - including, for a while, Clarke herself - Rebus finds himself "attached" to the investigation of the most recent disappearance and trying to make sense of a mysterious photo sent by a number of the women before they disappeared. Of course, Rebus being Rebus, he also finds himself causing a level of disruption to Clarke's office and her relationship with her superior officer James Page (who for a while has to put up with Rebus' constant references to Led Zeppelin, despite being manifestly too young to have realised that he shares a name with Jimmy Page of that iconic group).
Rankin has always taken considerable delight in the humour which comes from Rebus' "old-school" approach to investigations - cultivating sources on both sides of the law, not shying away from physical violence, drinking in slightly too many pubs - and the "cleaner" methods favoured by those above him, and this is a strong theme once again in the plot here. Page - who is dismissed at one point as "an office manager" - is driven to the point of distraction by Rebus' willingness to turn up in precisely the wrong place at precisely the right time.
Importantly, though, there are a number of key subplots in play throughout Grave. When Rebus left the scene in Exit Music, it seemed that "Big Ger" Cafferty, his organised-crime nemesis, was dying in hospital. Early in Grave, we learn that Cafferty has recovered, but is finding that his own methods of work aren't in line with the newer approaches favoured by younger criminals. It appears - and this is something for which we can definitely hope in future instalments - that both Cafferty and Rebus will have a new nemesis in Edinburgh's underworld by the end of the novel.
Also, Malcolm Fox makes an appearance as well. While his ability to carry a novel by himself is up for debate, as a supporting figure he's far from a bad one. Still incontrovertibly on the side of the "good guys", Fox is concerned by Rebus' willingness to share an occasional drink with Cafferty, and even more so when it seems that his unorthodox methods are once again rubbing off on Clarke, who appears to have been tagged as a "rising star" now that she's seemingly freed herself from Rebus' influence. There is even a risk that Fox - who surprises none of Rebus' frequent readers by warning him that there's an immense file of his indiscretions - might have an impact on Rebus' return to the force.
With all of these balls in the air, something most likely has to give in this novel, and I'll admit that the final revelation and the moment at which the "bad guy" is punished felt a bit grafted-on. Even with around 30 pages to go, I had honestly expected this plot to be continued in the next novel, and yet things do wrap up to some extent by the time the final page ends.
That said, Standing in Another Man's Grave has a lot of territory to cover and more to set up - more on both counts than most of the Rebus novels before his retirement. While Rankin has a history of creating solid supporting characters who don't always carry over to the next book he writes (Cafferty, Clarke and the less-used Gill Templer are the three best exceptions to the rule), he's given himself a very strong cast to pick from next time. Even Fox and his team would seem to be in a stronger light as foils or antagonists to Rebus, and a repeat performance from them wouldn't go astray.
The fact that this is a real return to form is also borne out in the crackling dialogue. The Complaints and The Impossible Dead both feature Rankin's snappy one-liners from many of the characters, but his style of humour only seems to work properly in the mouth of a maverick policeman, rather than a goody-goody like Fox and his team. Rebus' dialogue with a doorman at a sleazy nightclub, for example, is Rankin at his best, as is a three-way dialogue among Page, Clarke and Rebus as they leave a particularly gruesome crime scene.
Frankly, if this isn't Ian Rankin at his best, it's Rankin very close to it. Four stars.
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