Ian Rankin
Knots and Crosses (1987)
Knots and Crosses is the first John Rebus mystery. John Rebus is a Detective in the Edinburgh police force, who is not doing a very good job of getting over his divorce, or his time spent in the special forces. When someone starts kidnapping and murdering young girls, the entire police department drops everything to search for the serial killer. At the same time, John Rebus receives a series of cryptic notes, that may or may not be unrelated to the case.
John Rebus is a complex character, whose past is as much a mystery to him as it is to us. We watch his life fall apart around him, while he tries to pick up the pieces from both his fallen marriage and his past in the special forces.
A couple things I want to point out. This book was written in 1984, so everyone smokes–everywhere. Considering how the rest of the book did not have a particular feel of the past, this was occasionally disconcerting–not a fault of the book, just simply a note of how times have changed. The only other thing that didn’t age well was the fact that Rebus did not have joint custody of his daughter, but instead spent only a few hours with her a week. Again, this is simply a sign of how times have changed.
They mystery was good, although knowing the book was part of an on-going series, the idea that Rebus might be the killer was dead in the water–but that didn’t ruin the story, it just removed one small dimension of the story.
The only thing that particularly bothered me–the murder of young girls, initially put me off the story entirely, but I was eventually able to get past, as it simply became a fact of the story and not the focus of the tale.
Although it was a quick read, I definitely want to check out more of Ian Rankin’s John Rebus series–not just for the quality of the mystery, but also because I want to see how Rebus eventually recovers from his past.
Rating: 7/10
Tooth and Nail (1992)
In some ways, 1992 doesn’t seem that long ago to me. But reading this book, it seems a lifetime ago. Tooth and Nail was written in 1992, it many of the little things in the book made it feel old to me: the lack of cell phones, the smoking, little things like that.
Somehow, reading a story that feels dated, and realizing that I was 22 when the book was written is… disconcerting.
Despite the details feeling dated, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and gulped it down in a couple of hours.
Several years have passed since the incidents in Knots and Crosses. Rebus is slightly older, slightly more bitter, and still lonely. Yet he seems to have survived after the events of Knots and Crosses. And now he’s been called down to London to help as an “expert” in finding a murderer who has been killing women in a particularly brutal way.
Ian Rankin’s mysteries are not necessarily easy to read. The details can be quite graphic, but they also give you a feel for the scene and the area, though some may feel the details are overmuch.
One other thing to note, this is a British novel, and as such, the language is properly British, and there were a couple times I really had no idea what a word or phrase meant. I didn’t bother me though, just made me realize that my English is more parochial that I often care to admit.
Rating: 7/10
Inspector Rebus: Knots and Crosses (1987), Tooth and Nail (1992)
