Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin review: the devil's in the details
There are two crimes under investigation in this latest Rebus adventure, but readers will have to be alert if they are to stand a chance of solving them, writes Stuart Kelly
I think it is mandatory to express surprise that this is the 25th Rebus novel. Agatha Christie chalked up 33 Poirot novels (plus ten volumes of short stories and a solitary Poirot play), Colin Dexter only managed 13 Inspector Morse novels, and there are just 11 Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L Sayers. Even Christie lags behind Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels (53) and Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe on 48. But they’re American. I suppose we could take bets on whether Rebus will equal Poirot, or even ponder if the “silver anniversary Rebus” justifies the price hike to £25 (the previous one, A Heart Full Of Headstones was £20). Rankin is an exemplar of the WYSIWYG brand author – what you see is what you get – and manages adeptly indeed to fulfil expectations without succumbing to the formulaic.
This novel does not have a clearly “contemporary” hook in the way that The Naming of the Dead had the G8 summit in Gleneagles or Set In Darkness had the novelty of a new Scottish Parliament. It does develop Rebus’s own biography. The previous book began (and ended) with the revelation of Rebus being convicted of the killing of his nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty. True to the novels’ verisimilitude, there’s no flash-forward or sudden volte-face. Midnight and Blue is set in Saughton – sorry, HMP Edinburgh as everyone has to remember to call it – and tactfully no prominent real life prisoners appear.
The novel has two parallel investigations. On the outside, Siobhan is looking into the disappearance of a schoolgirl: in terms of novels being au courant, this soon links into online pornography, pseudo-celebrities and exploitation. Inside, one of Rebus’s fellow prisoners is found with his throat slashed in his locked cell, his cell-mate being dead to the world on spice (again, a cleverly up-to-date detail) and knocked unconscious to boot, but still alive.
Christine Esson takes this case. The social realism crime runs parallel with a nod to the classic “locked room” mystery beloved of John Dickson Carr. The victim, Jackie Simpson, was incarcerated after leaving his own blood at a break-in that conveniently uncovered that the premises were being used by a major southern drug dealer. One of the advantages of Rankin’s Edinburgh setting is that the connections between the cases – the links of friendship, employment, proximity and suchlike – do not seem forced in a city of Edinburgh’s scale, whereas it might not be as convincing in London, or even Glasgow.
Rankin is good at detail, and particularly at the detail which seems as if it is there merely to make the novel seem authentic – such as the layout of the prison – but proves instrumental in the denouement. The reader stands a fighting chance of solving both the cases, and in some ways it is the very easiness and fluidity of Rankin’s prose that allows him to smuggle the crucial point past all but the most attentive of readers.
The novel also sees the return of Malcolm Fox, who debuted in the The Complaints, never quite got his own series and now is part of the supporting cast. There is, however, a bit of a difference. It seems as if Rankin has the same opinion of Fox as many of his readers did: that he is a bit annoying and boring. When Rebus gets a call through to Fox on a burner phone, you can tell which character the reader is supposed to root for when Rebus responds to Fox’s “Who’s this?” with “Trading Standards, sir. We have reason to believe a Mr Malcolm Fox has been falsely presenting himself as a functioning detective”. Likewise, after Fox attempts to justify bending a rule, Christine Esson comments “Those sounded like lines stolen from the John Rebus handbook” to which Siobhan retorts “Recited by an actor who’s B-list at best”.
Back in Exit Music, an earlier valediction, Siobhan wisely commented that sometimes things could be less than meets the eye. Rankin’s gift for bathos is as well honed here. The power vacuum following Cafferty’s death is being exploited, and the wannabe kingpin, Darryl Christie, first introduced back in Standing In Another Man’s Grave, is even more psychotic and unpredictable. Unlike with Cafferty, however, the steely entente is more precarious. The possibility of English criminals muscling in is treated with scepticism: the best wee country in the world for crime might also be considered too wee, too poor and too stupid. I’m slightly disappointed that Audi Andrew is only mentioned in passing; another of the characters whom I think deserves more of an outing.
It's not a spoiler to say that there will most likely be a Rebus #26 – this ends with a cliffhanger and with unfinished business. Church bells can be heard tolling from Saughton, and the predictable quote about asking not for whom hangs there. Although I haven’t seen the new TV series, I am intrigued by the inclusion of Darryl Christie alongside Michael Rebus in the different time-period. Perhaps Rankin is working on a Rebusverse, like Marvel Studios and Doctor Who, and we can have no end of alternate Rebuses, solving Burke and Hare, the Gowrie Conspiracy and even the bodies buried at Vindolanda? Stranger things have happened.
Midnight and Blue, by Ian Rankin, Orion, £25
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