Category: Crime Fiction

Crime Fiction Alphabet: M is for Mortal Causes

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

crime_fiction_alphabetThis week’s letter in the Crime Fiction Alphabet series is M and I’ve chosen Ian Rankin’s Mortal Causes, which is the one book I finished reading in December.

Mortal Causes is the sixth book in the Inspector Rebus series. In his introduction Ian Rankin explains that ‘mortal’ in the Scots vernacular means ‘drunk’ so Mortal Causes

 evoked, in his mind, the demon drink, just as surely as it did any darker and more violent imagery. (page xii)

And there is a fair amount of violence in this dark book, starting with the discovery of a brutally tortured body in Mary King’s Close, an ancient Edinburgh street now buried beneath the High Street. It’s August in Edinburgh during the Festival.

Next time I visit Edinburgh I’d like to see Mary King’s Close. It’s open to the public and according to this website you can “experience the sights, sounds and maybe even smells of an amazing street that time forgot.  Where everyday people went about their day to day lives and where you can now walk in their footsteps.” Just the place for a murder, away from the busy streets, undisturbed by the festival goers and soundproofed so no one would hear any gunshots or screams.

There are links to the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, the IRA, the Catholic/Protestant conflict, the Secret Service and organised crime. Rebus works his way through this mix, seconded to the SCS (the Scottish Crime Squad) because he’d been in the Army and had served in Ulster in the 1960s. The relationship between Rebus and Big Ger Caffety, Edinburgh’s gangster boss, develops in this book as the victim is none other than Big Ger’s son and he insists Rebus finds his killer. He tells Rebus he wants revenge. His men

… are out there hunting, understood? And they’ll be keeping an eye on you. I want a result Strawman. … Revenge, Strawman, I’ll have it one way or the other. I’ll have it on somebody. (page 74)

Rebus’s personal life is no better, his relationship with Dr Patience Aitken is  difficult. They quarrel, she tries to civilise him, giving him poetry books and tickets for ballet and modern dance:

Rebus had been there before, other times, other women. Asking for something more, for commitment beyond the commitment.

He didn’t like it. (page 81)

Their relationship is also threatened by Rebus’s involvement with Caroline Rattray, from the Procurator Fiscal’s office, who ‘is mad about him’.

This book, like the other Rebus books I’ve read, is more than crime fiction. It’s a complex story exploring the psychology of guilt, revenge and fear.

Ian Rankin

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

me & IR

On Tuesday evening Ian Rankin was presented with the West Lothian Libraries’  Scot Scriever Award and I was there, thanks to my son, who lives in West Lothian. He’d managed to get the last tickets. Ian Rankin was voted the public’s favourite Scottish author. He’s been my favourite Scottish author for some time so I was delighted to hear him talk about his work and shocked when he drew my ticket number to win a signed copy of one of his books, Exit Music.

(Photo courtesy of West Lothian Council)

It was a fascinating evening. Ian Rankin is an excellent speaker, even though he said that he isn’t a stand-up comedian – he’s a writer and writers sit in isolation in their rooms, scribbling away with a pen or writing on a laptop, or whatever. He finds it a strange existence coming out of his shell to speak on tour at book events. His talk was punctuated with many amusing anecdotes and there was much laughter from his audience.

He gave us some advice.  As a teenager he’d entered a poetry competition and had read a book on writing poetry which said that you should write about what you know. Well, he did that, won the competition and got into trouble with his aunty because she recognised herself, even though his poem “Euthanasia” was about a tramp. Then there was a short story competition, which he won (he thought he could write a short story, because it was just like a poem but it goes to the edge of the page) writing about his uncle who walked through the streets naked and this also landed him in trouble when it was broadcast on the radio unchanged.

So his advice is “write about what you don’t know“, which is why when he decided to write a novel, Knots and Crosses, the first Rebus book, he wrote about the police because he knew nothing about them. He had done his research, talking to a couple of detectives, who as it turned out were investigating a crime similar to the one he was writing about in Knots and Crosses. They said the best way for him to see how they worked was for them to treat him as a suspect and he ended up for a while as a real suspect! So his next piece of advice is  “don’t do any research“. He did no research after that until he met a detective, who later became his friend and helped him make the books more realistic.

He writes crime fiction because it helps him look at the world, it takes on moral and ethical questions, why things are the way they are, what makes people work, and what crime says about our society and the problems we have. Crime fiction is now a serious subject to study, both at school and at university, even though it doesn’t get considered for the Booker Prize for example.  

He also talked about what he has been doing this year and the future. After the last Rebus book he wrote Doors Open , which is about an art heist. He planned it as the Scots Oceans Eleven, with all the great Scottish actors, but no one was interested in doing it. Later it was  serialised in NY Times, then published as a book and now a film company is interested. He decided that he didn’t want any involvement in filming the Rebus books because he didn’t want the actors’ voices and faces in his head (the reason I don’t like films of books is just the same) and it’s not possible to fit a book into an hour and a half TV production anyway (which is why I think the books are better). But he’s going to be  more involved in the films of Doors Open and The Complaints.

Even though he’s having a year’s break from writing he’s working on a film script of James Hogg’s book Confessions of a Justified Sinner. He’s finding this hard to write but I do hope he finishes it and the film gets made as I’ve been interested in James Hogg since reading Alice Munro’s book The View from Castle Rock (Hogg, born in 1770 was a poet, a protege of Sir Walter Scott, and a cousin of one of her ancestors). He may bring Rebus and Siobhan Clarke back investigating Cold Cases in another Complaints book – I hope he does.

It was a memorable evening  – Ian Rankin is great storyteller. .

My Best Crime Fiction Reads in 2009

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Kerrie is asking for people’s top ten crime fiction reads of this year from which she will collate the books and come up with the best crime fiction reads of 2009.

The rules are

  1. it is about crime fiction you’ve read in 2009. Year of publication doesn’t matter.
  2. about 10 titles in the format of title, author (no need for description etc).
  3. any order will do. If you think one was so much better than the others, you might like to put it in your list twice.
  4. You have until Jan 7 to do it.

I’ve read a lot more crime fiction this year than in previous years (for example I read 16 in 2008 compared to 47 this year) so it’s really difficult to decide which to list as my top ten. Here they are in alphabetical order of title (tomorrow I could just as easily come up with another ten titles).

If you want to contribute your own list pop over to Kerrie’s blog.

Alphabet in Crime Fiction: J and K

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Whilst I’ve been busy moving house Kerrie’s A-Z Crime Fiction meme has featured the letters J and K. Now that I have the computer up and working (well D actually did that for me) I’m having a little break from unpacking boxes to add to the series. I’ve written about the following books earlier in this blog and have adapted my reviews for this post.

the letter JJ is for A Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell.

This portrays Eunice, an illiterate woman and a psychopath who does anything to stop anyone from finding out that she can’t read or write.  Her ingenuity and resourcefulness is amazing. She blackmails people and killed her father. I found the whole premise of such a damaged person apparently functioning normally in society scary.

She is employed by the Coverdales as their housekeeper and in the interests of having their house kept clean and tidy they tried to make her comfortable. But part of the problem was that they looked on her as little more than a machine, not as a person. They meant well, wanting to make other people happy, but they were interferers and things went from bad to worse. Then Eunice met Joan, who was completely unstable, in fact she was insane. Joan is a religious fanatic, a sinner who delights in telling people of her past sins and wanting them to seek God’s forgiveness.  Their friendship ends in tragedy.

I felt helpless whilst reading this, desperately wanting the Coverdales to realise Eunice’s problems, but they were blind to the fact that Eunice was illiterate and although they tried to prevent her meeting Joan they were unaware of the danger they were in.  This inflamed Eunice and pushed her into taking the actions she did.

Although Eunice’s crime is known right from the start, that does not detract from the suspense. It actually makes it worse – you know that the murder is going to happen and as  the reasons why it happens become clear, the tension builds relentlessly.

letter Kis for King of the Streets by John Baker.

I read this over two years ago. It depicts violent murder in graphic detail, which I found hard to stomach and the subject matter of the abuse and murder of children is neither easy nor pleasant to contemplate, but it’s a quick read. This was the third book I’d read by Baker, all set in York and featuring the private detective, Sam Turner and his assistant Geordie (naive, but street-wise). Sam is investigating the murder of a blackmailer and the death of a teenage runaway, hampered by a gangster and his “minders”.

It’s well written, giving insight into the minds of both the detective and the criminal characters. I particularly liked the nickname ‘Gog’ for one of the ‘minders’, who trashes Sam’s office. Gog is, as the name suggests, a huge giant of a man, with little reasoning power, but plenty of brawn, looked after (not very successfully) by his brother, Ben. Baker also refers to Gulliver’s Travels in describing Gog as ‘Brobdingnagian’. At times I even felt sorry for Gog.

I enjoyed this book immensely, despite the violence it portrays.

Teaser Tuesdays

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

We’re still not in our new home, but still have access to the internet and I’m still reading! Next week it’ll be more difficult with all the unpacking and settling in, so I’ll probably be missing from the blogosphere then.

Currently I’m reading Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin.

About the book (from the back cover): It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing… A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city’s ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem – and it’s just about to erupt.

My teaser is from page 54:

Rebus shrugged. I’m just wondering how professional all of this really was. I mean on the surface, if you look at the style of execution, then yes, it was a pro job, no question. But then things start to niggle.

I always enjoy reading the Rebus books.  Although you can read each one as a stand alone book, reading them in order helps with understanding the background and the characters as they develop. I prefer reading to watching the TV series, but inevitably it is the faces of the actors I imagine as I’m reading.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: I

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Continuing with the Crime Fiction Alphabet,  I is for Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus.

Earlier this year I decided to read Rankin’s Inspector Rebus books in order, starting with the first, Knots and Crosses, published in 1987. Recently I finished the fifth – The Black Book, published in 1993. In all there are 17 in the series, so I’ve a few to go yet. I have read a couple out of sequence – Set in Darkness (2000) and The Falls (2001).

My copy of The Black Book is packed away with our belongings in storage, so this is going to be a bit brief. This is the first book in which both Big Ger Cafferty the ruthless gangster boss, organiser of crime in Edinburgh and DC Siobhan Clarke appear as main characters. DS Brian Holmes has been mugged and is in a coma in hospital, so Rebus with the help of Siobhan, is investigating his attack in the carpark of the Heartbreak Cafe.  (I liked the references to Elvis in this book, with dishes such as ‘Love Me Tenderloin”.) When Rebus finds Brian’s little black book, with his coded notes on various criminals and old cases he is drawn back to investigate the fire that five years earlier had destroyed an Edinburgh hotel leaving an unidentified dead body. His team are also running Operation Moneybags, aimed at busting Big Ger’s moneylending  business.

Rebus has plenty of personal problems in this book. His girlfriend, fed up with his unreliable hours has locked him out of her flat and his brother and ex-con Michael has turned up in Edinburgh, sleeping in the box room in Rebus’s flat. So Rebus, who has let his flat to students has to sleep on the sofa in the living room. As usual with the Rebus books there are a number of twists and turns, with different sub-plots running at the same time as the main plot.

You don’t have to read the books in order as they each stand alone, but I think it helps to see Rebus’s character as it develops. The next book in the series is Mortal Causes, and as I have kept this handy (not in storage) I’ll be reading this next.