Skinner's Rules [Hardcover]

Well, if you like books about a middle-aged cop who leaves guys half his age moaning in agony after a karate session, leaves women half his age moaning in bed, and every time his superiors meet with him, they promote him... then you'll like this book. If that sounds a bit silly, then the actual plot is even sillier, so perhaps you should pass. If Rankin's Rebus is too screwed up to be believable, then Skinner is too perfect to be believable.

The first of Jardine's 11-book (so far) Skinner series introduces us to Edinburgh's Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Skinner. Unlike a lot of series heroes, Skinner is a pretty well adjusted, good-looking, sharp-dressing, kind of guy. The only dark part to him is his wife's death in a car accident years ago, but he seems to have sorted that out in his head as well. It's kind of a nice change of pace to come across a policeman protagonist without tons of neurosis or baggage -- and yet he's almost boringly good. In addition to the above, he's a crack shot, a karate black belt, a good cook, a great father to his daughter, and a sensitive lover to his American doctor girlfriend. There's not a whole lot of room for him to develop as a series character, just wind him up and unleash him on the crime...

The crime here is a nasty decapitation killing of a young advocate in the wee hours on the Royal Mile. Soon after Skinner has launched the investigation, a homeless man is set on fire and killed not too far away. There are very few leads and Skinner's team is getting nowhere, when a woman is killed with a meat cleaver and a young policeman has his throat cut in the same area. Now it's clear that there's some sort of maniac at work, but there's still no physical evidence to go on and not much else. When another advocate, the girlfriend of the first victim, jumps or is pushed in front of a train in Glasgow and dies, Skinner finally has something to go on. Jardine nicely covers the procedural aspect of the investigation into the lives of the two advocates, including searches of their homes, interviews with family and friends. This is all the usual stuff, but it's done quite well. When another victim from the past turns up, Skinner's got a motive and soon a suspect in custody.

Unfortunately, this is where the book starts to veer into the ridiculous thriller zone. It seems the suspect has diplomatic immunity, and the Foreign Office is adamant that he can't be charged or publicly accused in any way. Why a businessman running a chemical plant in Scotland would be granted diplomatic accreditation is never explained, and Jardine seems to hope that the reader won't realize that this makes no sense at all. The FO's insistence that the Japanese not drop his diplomatic immunity because otherwise some sort of legal precedent might be set is equally off-base, there have been numerous instances of diplomats who've committed crimes and had their immunity revoked by their own governments. This is all a flimsy device to set up future plot developments.

Naturally Skinner's not happy with this outcome, and weeks later a reason to reopen the investigation pops into his head. Now, however, he's proceeding with extreme discretion, using only a hand-picked team to sift over the evidence again, looking for links between the two dead advocates. Again, the procedural aspects of this are done quite well, and one gets to see a little more of the supporting police cast at work. Although, again, all the police seem fairly good, well-adjusted people who do their jobs well. As in so many crime novels, the answer lies deep in the past, and in the final third of the book, we're dropped into a ridiculous James Bond plotline. Without giving it away, this involves the impending visit of a fictitious new Syrian president to a participate in a debate at Edinburgh University (yeah, right!), shadowy SAS operatives, and "an enormously sophisticated operation, brilliantly conceived by totally ruthless men" leading to "economic enslavement" of the world. This is just awful, implausible stuff, the kind of conspiracy plotting that anyone with an ounce of sense could poke holes in without any effort whatsoever.

I prefer my crime novels to stick to realistic plots, so by the end, I was pretty disappointed with this series debut. It may be a case of a first-time writer overreaching himself, so I might try one or two more in the series to see if they're any better and if the characters develop at all. Edinburgh never really comes alive in the book either, so hopefully future installments make more use of the city's atmosphere.

This was my first Skinner book, and I enjoyed it. I have since read several more, and they have became progressively worse! Skinner becomes more irritating and arrogant as the series advances, but this one was good.

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