Scotland noir

>> Bad-boy detective Inspector Rebus is back in Set in Darkness

by JULIET WATERS

According to the omniscient narrator of Set in Darkness, Ian Rankin's 11th mystery novel in the Inspector Rebus series: "There were those who said that Edinburgh was an invisible city, hiding its true feelings and intentions, its citizens outwardly respectable, its streets appearing frozen in time. You could visit the place and come away with little sense of having understood what drove it."

This may still be true, but increasingly less so with the wave of young Scottish writers who've been making the underside of Edinburgh visible in books and film for a few years now. Ian Rankin may not be the most beat of the novelists who've been twisting cryptic dialogue with brutal realism to shape a radical new literature. But his prolific accomplishments in crime writing over the last decade are extremely impressive and probably more influential on the writing scene than people may realize. If Irvine Welsh is Scotland's William Burroughs, then Rankin is its Raymond Chandler.

Years before Welsh's Trainspotting made the world conscious of Leith, the most dangerous, impoverished neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Rankin had explored it in brutal detail in his first Inspector John Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses. And anyone who's read Welsh's last novel, Filth, will certainly recognize a lot of Rebus in Welsh's psychopathic, brutal, music-loving detective.

There are, of course, major differences between the two cops. Rebus can be a nasty negotiator, but he's not a sadist. Welsh's detective has repugnant taste in music (one can forgive him BTO, but never Michael Bolton), while Rebus' taste is more respectable: Pink Floyd, the Stones, late-career Beatles. Rankin, who used to be in a punk band, could have made Rebus more hip if he'd wanted, but that would actually take away from the kind of gritty un-self-conscious machismo that makes Rebus so special.

Rebus is old-school, not just in music, but in his ways. A hard drinker and smoker, a failed husband and father, and bit of a slut (in this novel he jeopardizes his career for a drunken one-night stand with an ex-supermodel/groupie who is the sister of a murder victim he's investigating). He's a favourite with most of the young investigators he mentors, and despised by senior management. One can't help rooting for Rebus, the same way one would root for Robbie Coltrane's fucked up psychiatrist/profiler character on the BBC (not the NBC) series, Cracker. And soon we'll be able to root for Rebus on the little screen, when he gets his own British series sometime this year. But, still, Rebus never lets you like him very much.

On top of all his addictions and character flaws, he's deliberately and irritatingly apolitical. In the 1979 referendum Rebus' ex-wife was a nationalist. To deliberately provoke and disappoint her he flirted with voting no, but then decided not to vote. Now it turns out that '79 has come back to haunt him.

While being given a tour of the new Scottish Parliament building, Rebus discovers a decades-old skeleton wearing a T-shirt from the Stones' Some Girls tour. A couple of days after Rebus and his team start investigating the death of "Skelly," a Scottish politician is murdered and a homeless man commits suicide. It becomes increasingly clear that the deaths of Skelly, the MSP and the homeless man (nicknamed "Supertramp," after it's discovered that he has #400,000 in his bank account) are connected--but how?

What follows is a brilliantly paced blend of Scottish politics, organized and disorganized crime, high and low Edinburgh society, sexual assault, about 10 different brands of Scotch and some very bad food, with prose that one critic has compared to paint thinner.

If you haven't discovered Inspector Rebus yet, this is the summer to start. Especially if you ever plan to visit Edinburgh, just so you'll know where not to go. :

Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin. Orion, pb, 415pp, $29.99