What makes a good crime writer? Well, creating an interesting copper certainly helps. This is the 12th novel to feature Det Insp John Rebus of the Lothian and Borders Police: we ought to be sick to death of him by now, but somehow - rather like the vintage malts of which, over the course of a dozen volumes, he has consumed an awe-inspiring quantity - Rebus just keeps getting better and better. Unlike most serial crime-solvers, he hasn't been endowed with OTT character traits which were intended to be endearing but turned out to be merely irritating. Sure, he drinks too much; sure, he neglects his friends and ignores his family; sure, he's slightly shabby, slightly overweight, slightly surly. But the lens through which Rebus views the world is diamond-sharp. Here he is at a football match (he's not really a fan - it's his colleague Siobhan Clarke who wears the Hibs scarf and does the screaming). "Easter Road was bathed in sunshine, the players throwing long shadows across the pitch. For a while, Rebus found himself following this shadow-play rather than the game itself: black puppet shapes, not quite human, playing something that wasn't quite football . . . " And here he is in conversation with an Edinburgh barman. " `How about yourself?' The barman said. It was as if each day held its identical routine, right down to the drama being played out on the [television] screen. "Rebus thought of possible answers. The potential that some serial killer was on the loose, and had been since the early seventies. A missing girl almost sure to turn up dead. A single, twisted face shared by Siamese twins.
"`Ach, you know,' he said at last. The barman nodded agreement, as though it was exactly the answer he'd expected . . . "
This is the work of a very good crime writer at his very best. Yes, there's a plot - in The Falls, a multi-layered, sophisticated story which involves wooden dolls in six-inch coffins, role-playing games on the Internet, and a pair of 19th-century bodysnatchers - but the joy of the Rebus books is way, way beyond the plot-driven prattling which so often passes for crime fiction. The brilliant use of Edinburgh and its environs; the development of strong women characters and trenchant awareness of sexual politics in the workplace; the strong ensemble cast over which Rebus casts his lonely shadow. Whatever it is that makes a good crime writer, Ian Rankin has it in spades.
Arminta Wallace is an Irish Times journalist
