What Book to Read?

After eighteen books, Detective Inspector Rebus of the Edinburgh police has finally retired. What is Ian Rankin going to do next? Well, after a one-off crime story – Doors Open (2008) – Rankin has produced The Complaints (2009) which is the first in a new series featuring Detective Inspector Malcolm Fox. Fox is at first sight quite unlike Rebus. For one thing, he works for the Professional Standards Unit of the Complaints and Conduct section of the Lothian and Borders Police, a body that investigates police misconduct – a body Rebus might easily have fallen foul of himself, given his ambiguous relationship with the crime boss ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, (though I can’t remember he ever did). But they are in other ways alike: both are loners with failed marriages behind them, family ties that tug at them and a taste for the bottle – though Fox has now sworn off the booze. And their work environment – Edinburgh – is the same, with dark secrets lurking behind the glitz and glamour.  I know it’s a bit unfair to compare Fox to Rebus, but Rankin’s original series was so good that it’s impossible not to make the comparison.

Fox has just finished building a case against a Glen Heaton, a detective who got results, but only by cutting corners and doing deals with criminals. He is then asked to look into Jamie Breck, a detective who may be part of a paedophile ring. But Fox’s sister’s boyfriend is found murdered, and the detective assigned to the case is none other than DS Breck. Fox can’t help taking an active interest, and soon he and Breck become friends. But who is following him? And why do both Fox and Breck suddenly find themselves suspended? Fox knows that other police hate the complaints section; he’s been called a ‘twisted bastard’ and ‘lower than slime’ and accused of ‘shafting your own kind’. And Heaton’s boss is clearly out to get him. Fox sees the police force as ‘a series of connected mechanisms, any one of which could be tampered with’. Who can he trust? How can he fight back?

One of the things I always liked about the Rebus novels was that they dealt with crimes that were thoroughly embedded in the social and economic structure of Scotland, rather than treading the familiar path of serial killings favoured by many other crime writers. This is equally true of The Complaints. Edinburg is in recession. Everywhere building projects have stalled, developers are failing, banks and building societies are looking shaky and investors are counting their losses. Just as in the police world there can be a fine line between crime and its detection, so in the larger economy there can be a fine line between crime and legitimate business, particularly when times are tough. Who is calling in favours and who is seeking retribution?

This is a police procedural, not a thriller. Its appeal depends on the cleverness of the crime and its detection, rather than on high levels of tension. I got a bit lost at times trying to figure out who was doing what to whom, but the resolution works well. It also depends on the how sympathetic the main character is, and Fox passes this test too. Some police think the complaints section is for ‘the cold fish, the oddities, the cops who could never make it as bona fide detectives’, and Fox sometimes thinks of himself as a spectator, not someone who makes things happen. ‘A bear of a man … Slow but steady, and only occasionally to be feared’. But in the course of the story he becomes fully engaged, and proves that he is completely up to the task. He’s not Rebus, but he may turn out to be just as interesting.

You can find out more about Ian Rankin and The Complaints here. If by chance you haven’t already read the Rebus series, forget about the first few, which are early works, and jump in somewhere round Black and Blue (1997). You won’t regret it. A new Fox story, The Impossible Dead, is due out in October.