A Question of Blood - Ian Rankin

 A Question of Blood (2003) is one of the best Rebus novels.   I read and did't much rate the early ones as they came out.   The latest additions are expertly written but Rebus is retired, his involvement in crime solving increasingly difficult to justify and the police element split between the promoted Siobhan Clarke and the Complaints officer Malcolm Fox.   2003 is Rebus at the height of his buccaneering career.  At the start of A Question of Blood we are led to believe he has murdered Martin Fairstone, DS Clarke's stalker.   Fairstone died in a chip pan fire and Rebus is in hospital with what he claims are scalded hands but which others suspect might be burns.

A shooting incident at a private school in Queensferry gives Rebus and Clarke a chance to keep out of sight.   The officer in charge, DI Bobby Hogan, asks for Rebus's help and, since Rebus can't even light his own cigarettes, Clarke will have to assistt.   Hogan calls on Rebus because the shooter, who then killed himself, was an ex-SAS man called Lee Herdman, and Hogan knows that Rebus tried out for the SAS during his military service.   The two dead youths are the son of a judge and what Rebus suddenly realises is the son of a cousin he used to look after when he was on leave.   Rebus's family relations are always distant, so it is somewhat awkward when he visits his distraught cousin.

Rebus obviously shouldn't be involved because of the family link, but this is easily navigated as he is, and because of his hands can only be, a consultant.   He comes across a goth princess called Miss Teri who also attends the same school as the victims.   And then there is the youth who was shot and survived, James Bell, soon of Jack Bell the publicity hungry MSP whom Rebus has come across before.   Other old acquaintances with links to the crime are Peacock Johnson, gun supplier to Edinburgh's more militant thugs, and his henchman Evil Bob.

Clarke meanwhile comes across another SAS veteran called Doug Brimson, who was a friend of Herdman.  Brimson now runs a flying school.   He his handsome and friendly, obviously well off, and Siobhan takes a fancy to him.

The storytelling is masterful.   I guessed the twist in the main investigation but got nowhere near the motivation.   As I say, for me A Question of Blood is one of the best Rebus novels and highly recommended.

Let It Bleed (Rebus 7) - Ian Rankin

The beauty of ebooks is that you can download one for under £1 in a click. You don't have time or need to speculate. If it's not up to scratch, no biggie. I bought the first Rebus when it came out in paperback, probably in the early Nineties. I still remember how disappointed I was. The plot was nothing much to write home about and the detective's name was just plain silly. I have to say I didn't think much of the early TV adaptations either - the ones starring John Hannah - though they did improve when Ken Stott took over, and Stott remains the model for the Rebus in my head.

Anyway, last week Let it Bleed was on offer and I thought what-the-hey? It's halfway through the series and sure enough Rebus has amassed sufficient character to make time spent in his company enjoyable. The new edition has exclusive extra material from Rankin which for me was best avoided. I really don't need insights into the authorial psyche unless they are incorporated into the main text.

The story itself is very much of its era, the mid-Nineties, when the UK was finally waking up to the legacy of the Thatcher free-marketeers. Entrepreneurship has corrupted every aspect of public life. The legerdemain that Rankin pulls off here is very impressive; he sends us off in pursuit of the usual suspect who turns out to be the wrong suspect. Rankin at this period was not great at the intricacies of the police system (though he is now with his Malcolm Fox series) and Let It Bleed succeeds principally because Rebus is working off the books, which gives him something to lose - his career, the only things he has to keep him from out-and-out alcoholism - if it all goes pear-shaped.

There's something else here which, for me at least, the early books lacked, and that's compassion. The alkies and the junkies and the petty criminals are all real people, the real bad guys - the upwardly mobile - perhaps slightly less so. This enables flashes of wit that really humanise Rebus's world without distracting from the seriousness of the plot.

In short, then, I enjoyed it. The name Rebus is still silly, but after all this time what can Rankin do? I can't help wondering if the Rebus/Fox mash-up Even Dogs in the Wild (2015), presumably a sort of Edinburgh version of Superman meets Batman, might offer me the perfect Rankin experience.