Published in 2002, Beggars Banquet (the punctuation is inspired by the Rolling Stones album) contains a range of Ian Rankin's short stories written between 1991 and 2000. In contrast to Rankin's earlier short-story collection - A Good Hanging from 1992 - not all of these are Rebus stories, in fact, the good DI Rebus only appears 7 times across the 21 stories on offer here.
Short stories in crime fiction are always a risky proposition in my view. The best of them manage to showcase the creative side of the authors in a very condensed fashion - Agatha Christie, for example, was as much in control of her art in shorter form as she was at novel length. At their worst, the short story amounts to permission for the author to do away with the subtleties of plot and rely on coincidence and rather flimsy clues to present a solution which usually wouldn't stack up in the longer form.
Rankin's short stories here, at least those which deal with detection and the solving of crimes (read: Rebus stories), tend to be better than those worst examples, but not quite at the heights that his best novels can reach. The entertaining "Face the Music", for example, features Rebus at his maverick best dealing with a daylight robbery from an audio-visual shop, and the plot could easily have been spun out into at least part of a novel without much effort. "Trip Trap", on the other hand, sees Rebus jump to a conclusion - admittedly a rather obvious one - based on tissue-thin evidence, and the resolution of "Castle Dangerous" relies far too much on coincidence to be plausible.
Among the non-Rebus stories, there are similar tallies of hits and misses. "Principles of Accounts" is a genuinely tense game of cat-and-mouse with a truly surprising twist at the end, while "The Wider Scheme" falls flat with a twist which is telegraphed far too early in the piece.
There are some more "experimental" pieces, too. "Natural Selection" is a well-written (if overlong) dialogue among a group of small-time gangsters in a pub, "The Serpent's Back" takes place in the Edinburgh of the 1700s, and "The Confession" is based around precisely that, becoming quite claustrophobic as it unwinds. "The Hanged Man" even sees Rankin look at what might be termed supernatural themes, albeit rather cursorily, in combination with his customary "Tartan Noir" realism.
For Rankin aficionados, perhaps the most important entry in this collection is the novella "Death is Not The End".
Parts of this were recycled as a subplot in the 1999 novel Dead Souls, and it was an unusual experience reading the novella as the recycling was done almost bodily into the novel. That being said, the two plots of the novella frankly felt undercooked, with the ending of one of them being only marginally more inspired than "...and then I woke up". I'll stick with the more well-rounded treatment in Dead Souls.
The real question, though, with any collection of short stories, is whether or not it's actually something fans of the novelist need in their lives.
Obviously the trite answer is "yes". As the copyright details make clear, all of these stories were published in limited runs and "various authors" compilations. Assembling them all without this handy volume would be a considerable ask.
In saying that, the fan may also be well-advised to look for 2014's The Beat Goes On, which collects all of the Rebus short stories, and therefore covers all of A Good Hanging, the seven Rebus entries here and others. Of course, if one or more of the non-Rebus stories here pique the interest, looking for this volume may be advised.
All told, a combination of hits and misses, and one which has been superseded in many ways. 3.5 stars.
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