Standing in Another Man’s Grave

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Ian Rankin is a canny devil. A master of subverting expectations — Rebus is back after five years, hurrah! — he treats the reader to the most downbeat of beginnings: the bleak, mechanical funeral of a dead cop. His death isn’t even a mystery: cancer. Of course, this doesn’t stop Rebus lighting up and wondering how long it will be before he’s wearing a wooden suit.

Anybody who hasn’t read Rankin before will wonder what all the fuss is about and, alas, the rest of the novel will not change their mind. Rebus is now a civilian member of the Cold Crimes Unit — which means any skulduggery is long in the past — and forced to rely on the strained goodwill of his former sidekick Siobhan Clarke as he slowly decides that a serial killer has been operating along Scotland’s longest road, the A9.

There is more intrigue than excitement as the cast also includes Big Ger Cafferty, Rankin’s erstwhile archenemy who seems keen to help for some reason, and Malcolm Fox from internal affairs (the protagonist of Rankin’s previous two novels), who also doesn’t like Rebus’s maverick methods. It must have been interesting for Rankin to have all his characters rub shoulders, but the resulting friction produces few real sparks.

The novel — it would be misleading to call it a thriller — is long on talk and short on action. This may be what real police work is like but, compared with such masterpieces as Black and Blue and Fleshmarket Close, Standing in Another Man’s Grave is a minor work. What saves it for Rankin’s legion of fans is the quality of the writing. Office colleagues are differentiated with skill, Scotland’s dramatic landscapes are described in all their fear and gloaming and, most important of all, the trademark pawky humour is ever-present. The thought of Rebus in strawberry-coloured cords is hilarious.

Both Rebus and Rankin belong to the awkward squad, doing their own thing, refusing to play by the rules. While Part Six — with its epigraph: “Woke up this morning, I had snow in my eyes / And I’ve been sleeping under terrible skies…” — does finally gain some narrative momentum, the abiding impression of the book is of one man labouring under a heavy burden. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on him for disappointing our expectations. Then again, perhaps we should be mad as hell.

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