Dead Souls

Ian Rankin

Reading Dead Souls reminded me of why I liked Motherless Brooklyn so much. Motherless Brooklyn is a great thriller because its private-eye protagonist is such a fresh character. Dead Souls has John Rebus; an altogether more conventional creation. Rebus is a cop, not a private-eye, but his maverick status in the local cop shop allows him to operate more or less as he likes. So, in a sense, the novel is a typical private-eye thriller. And Rebus is typical of the genre. Drinks too much, check. Strained relationship with ex and/or current partner, check. Falls out with officialdom on the way to solving the mystery, check. Ho hum.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the story. Or rather, stories, in the sense that Rankin heaps plenty onto Rebus's plate in the book's 480 pages. There's a paedophile trial ongoing in Edinburgh but it's seems the bigger fish have already got away. There's the mystery surrounding the suicide of one Rebus's colleagues. There's the disappearance of the son of Rebus's childhood sweetheart to account for. And there's the sudden and unwelcome appearance in Scotland of a celebrity serial killer, recently released stateside. Rankin weaves together the various plots with great skill and realism; not by throwing open a sudden door which at the end ties everything together but by allowing the stories to gently overlap. He even allows one or two issues to remain unresolved (if you've read this, remember the poisoner at the zoo?) which I always think keeps a thriller from getting too cosy. And if I've complained about Rebus himself being a bit two-dimensional I have to say in Rankin's favour he writes a damn fine baddie.

This was my first Ian Rankin novel but Dead Souls is already Rankin's 10th Rebus novel. I'll be looking out for some of the others.