Customer Reviews

Set in Darkness

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a well written police procedural/hard boiled detective novel. Part of a popular series set in Edinburgh and featuring the distinctly hard boiled Detective Inspector Rebus. As with many novels in this genre, Rebus is flawed human being redeemed by his obsessive interest in pursuing the truth and establishing justice, features often unappreciated by his superiors. While hardly at the level of Raymond Chandler, these books are solid examples of the genre, written well with good plotting and creditable characters. Good entertainment reading.

This is one of the most satisfying series I have ever read and this one is a gem. The story about Scotland regaining its parliament and the history of Edinburgh are a superb backdrop to this dark chapter in the life and times of John Rebus. Rankin has really set up a puzzler this time--three murders (one old, new two) with no apparent ties. But as Rebus begins the hunt, the pieces start coming together into an extremely satisfying and well-constructed conclusion. As always, the supporting characters and subplots are as intricate and vital to the overall story as is Rebus and the initial crime.I finish each book and it takes awhile to come back to the real world. Rebus' ongoing personal and professional problems are beautifully woven into the story. His is so complex a character that I would suggest that, if you are thinking about reading the series, you start at the beginning. READ THESE BOOKS! You will not be disappointed.

The problem with Ian Rankin is that he makes all the other mystery writers I read (and I read plenty) look second rate. I believe he is the best writer active in this genre today, surpassing even Robert Barnard, Reginald Hill and Ruth Rendell.

Inspector Rebus is brilliant and flawed. The story is as close to perfect as a mystery gets. The dialog is unforced and natural. The description is mood-setting without being distracting. If you haven't read any Rankin, do yourself a favor by going back and reading them all.

By and large, fictional detectives aren't a cheery lot. Kay Scarpetta spends her time contemplating the ugliness of humanity, surrounded by corpses which illustrate man's inhumanity to man. The brilliant Adam Dalgliesh isn't exactly the life of the party, though he's an extremely sensitive soul who writes poetry - an intriguing character facet.

But Ian Rankin's Edinburgh police inspector John Rebus is a breed unto himself. He loves the Rolling Stones and rock music in general. He has terrible luck with women and drinks far too much for his own good. He's stubborn, often rude and causes his superiors a great deal of worry. How many of us can identify with us on one level or another?

Yet I'm always glad to see him in any new novel by Mr. Rankin and "Set In Darkness" does not disappoint. Rankin's Rebus is one of the most memorable characters in 20th century crime fiction. Though his is a morose personality, his dark sides never eclipse his basic humanity. He makes mistakes and bad choices in his personal life, but when it comes to solving a crime he's dead on and often at odds with his long-suffering co-workers.

This time, Rebus must solve the mystery of the death of Roddy Grieve, an up-and-coming member of the Scottish Parliment who possesses a surname I found rather interesting, given his tragic fate. Grieve turns up dead on the same piece of land where a new Scottish Parliment building is going to be built. But he's not the first body to turn up in the ruins of the building on this property which is being demolished - an unknown skeleton has preceeded Grieve in death and has been walled up in the old building. Who put it there? Who is it? And what's being covered up?

Rankin sprinkles his main story with well-constructed subplots. This time, Rebus is confronted with a co-worker who is also a stalker harrassing a police-women and personal friend of Rebus'.

To look at the world through Rebus' eyes is to see it through a painful lens. Yet his moody persona permeates memorable sequences and Rankin's plots are always delightfully twisted. I've read all the Inspector Rebus novels from the first to this latest one, and have never been disappointed in the least by any of them. Rankin's skill as a mystery writer is in the same superior league as P. D. James and Agatha Christie.

Ian Rankin's "Set in Darkness" is actually a reprint of a book he originally wrote and published in the late 1990's. As I have read all - I think, anyway - of his books about Inspector John Rebus, of the Lothian and Borders Police Department in Edinburgh, I was a little worried when I received this book from AmazonUSA that I had read it years before. I was glad to realise I hadn't - it was new to me.

"Set in Darkness" is definitely not Rankin's best Rebus book. It's good enough to enjoy - three plot lines are reduced by the end of the book - but to a novice Rankin-reader, it's a tough slog. John Rebus, a moody, go-it-alone kind of cop, is the bane of his supervisors' existence. Not a team player when it counts in solving a crime or two, Rebus is not a sympathetic character. He is, however, an extremely interesting one to read about. He's surrounded - loosely - by his fellow police officers and works with them, as needed. The "loner cop" is one we've all seen many times before. Rankin does a good job at fleshing out both the good guys and the bad guys in his work, and "Set in Darkness" doesn't disappoint in its nuanced character development. I think, though, the plot sort of fell a little short of great.

If you've never read Ian Rankin, I'd start with one of his other Rebus books. They're all described in Amazon fairly well.

I heard that Ian Rankin was a very good writer, but I never picked up any of his books to read. That was my mistake.

"Set in Darkness" is the second Rankin book that I have read, and I am now convinced that he is one of the best crime/detective/mystery writers out there. "Set in Darkness" was a true pleasure to read. The plot was intricate and well-conconstructed, the setting (Edinburgh) was enchanting, and the characters were clearly drawn and they were fascinating.

The only drawback is the Scottish colloquillisms and slang terms that Rankin uses. They are a bit hard to follow at times, but this is a minor inconvenience. John Rebus, the main character, is as good as they come.

Put Rankin on your "A" list of authors- you'll not be disappointed.

Ian Rankin just gets better and better. His (anti-)hero John Rebus, an Edinburgh cop, never fails to fascinate. Like the other books in this series, the mystery is edgy, tight and suspenseful, the secondary characters compelling, and Edinburgh--almost a character in itself--looms in the background, grim, shabby and poignantly dignified. What makes Rankin so good is the moral dilemmas he throws Inspector Rebus into and the choices he forces his character to make. Rebus is cynical, world weary, irreverent, alcholic--a loner who has failed at his personal and professional lives in all the recognized ways. And yet we like him immensely and sympathize completely, even when we don't agree with the choices he makes.

Somehow, Rankin keeps producing great reads, each better than the last, and "Set in Darkness" is no exception. I just hope Rankin never tires of Inspector John Rebus, because I won't.

Ian Rankin has been my favorite author ever since I discovered a remainder copy of "Strip Jack" at a bookstore four years ago; after reading that I found everything I could that he had written, and I have snapped up each new book. I hate to say I am a little disappointed with this one. The intricacies of the plot and spare, terse writing style are equal to Rankin's previous Inspector Rebus books, as are all the characterizations but for one: John Rebus himself. I couldn't help but feel that DI Rebus got relegated to being an almost secondary character alongside the other detectives, suspects, and criminals peopling the book, and worse yet, he didn't put up much of a fight about it. I've read every Rebus book and if there's one thing the guy doesn't do naturally, it's "subdued." His interrogation of a heart-attack victim near the close of "Set in Darkness" was, I felt, the first time I really recognized him in this book. Also good: the thread involving Rebus's dogged pursuit of an underworld boss who's probably the closest thing to a friend Rebus has. But if you haven't read a John Rebus mystery, I would recommend trying "Knots and Crosses" or "Tooth and Nail" first if you want to see Rebus at his flawed, fascinating and incredibly capable best.

Farmer Watson has decided to keep Detective Inspector John Rebus out of trouble by assigning him to a committee concerned with the new Scottish Parliament's security. Rebus inspects the building work at Queensbury House with his colleagues, including fast-tracker Derek Linford. However, Rebus seems to attract trouble, and it's not long before a body is discovered...

I've only read the one Rebus novel before, The Hanging Garden, and in that earlier composition, Rebus seemed to work much more on his own. Set in Darkness is a more of an ensemble piece, and seems to hail from the tradition of the police procedural. Rebus's colleagues are very much in the limelight, featuring Linford's flirtation with Siobhan Clarke, and the 'Time Team' of Wylie and Hood. There are just as many coincidences as you'd find in three editions of TV's 'The Bill' (where the two crimes per episode are always inextricably linked). This is probably related to the Kevin Bacon game, the 'six degrees of separation' (where everyone on the planet has links with everyone else), mentioned in the novel. Rankin concentrates on the smaller universe that consists of Edinburgh, and this is more than enough. Indeed, so flourished is this novel with characters, that if you put the narrative down, you're bound to be really confused when you come back to it.

Not long after 'Skelly' is discovered in Queensbury House, the corpse of the prospective MSP Roddy Grieve is also found there. Siobhan Clarke witnesses the suicide of a tramp who had half a million in the bank. Meanwhile, two men are assaulting women from singles' clubs. Rebus's investigation brings him to Rosslyn Chapel, the cryptic home of cranks and the Knights Templar, the secretive movement that was the first police force, invented banking, that fought at Bannockburn, and laid the foundations of Scotland's Masonic tradition. However, Rebus is far more interested in the Edinburgh masons of the last twenty years, since the previous devolution referendum. Just whose is the body in the fireplace at Queensbury House? Early on in the novel, a historian relates a tale about the lunatic son of the Duke of Queensbury, who ate a servant on the night of the Act of Union, and left him on a spit in the fireplace. This is where Rankin is at his best - he employs the real Edinburgh to great effect. The Oxford Bar, Rebus's local, is a real hostelry. This adds a note of authenticity to Rankin's work, and it's quite stimulating trying to track down all the locations mentioned in this novel. It's also amusing to see Rebus's scepticism about devolution - rogues will always be rogues, no matter where they're housed. Ian Rankin also seems to be warming to his new career as literary critic. There's quite a bit of Hugh MacDiarmid in this book, fairly appropriately, as he was a founder of the Scottish Nationalist party. MacDiarmid also joined the Communist party at a quite inappropriate time. The Grieve family have been in politics for generations, starting from the Liberal Party, from Old to New Labour, with also a flirtation with the Tories. An artistic as well as a political family, they have an 'unknown' MacDiarmid poem hanging on the walls of their family home. MacDiarmid's real name was Christopher Murray Grieve (although he's no relation of the Grieve family here). He's not the only one to use a pseudonym in the novel: so does the mysterious suicide victim, 'Chris Mackie', but for less artistic reasons.

You don't have to have read all the other novels in this series to appreciate Set in Darkness. I can compare this with The Hanging Garden and see that Rankin still maintains his obsession with popular music (but then Rebus is an aficionado too, so that's alright - although this does mean that the inevitable recording session makes its way into the book). This might seem a bit tiresome, but then again I guess detectives do have to have some small talk to relax their subjects. Rebus says he's been reading up on his Edinburgh history recently, but so has Rankin too. Indeed, the city seems almost more alive than the inspector himself, even though most of its tales concern death. The mortality of someone very close to Rebus is brought into question, someone who seems larger than life, and someone with a lot more vitality than Rebus, say... I think one of the problems with Rebus is that he's so hard to picture, and as the TV producers have probably found, so very hard to cast. Rebus seems more thing than man, hard to make out from the shadows (not a pop reference). I see that Rankin's new novel is called 'The Falls' - will Rebus ride the Reichenbach, locked in mortal combat with his Moriarty, in the city where Doyle learnt from Bell? Has Ian Rankin grown tired of his creation? Or has he just developed a new obsession for the music of Mark E. Smith?

Dreary winter is settling over Edinburgh but the building boom bustles on and Inspector John Rebus, for his sins, finds himself assigned to security at Queensbury House, the intended home of the new Scottish parliament. His tour of the renovation is as dull as expected until their guide rips the boards off an old fireplace, exposing a skeleton dating from previous rebuilding in the late 70s.

This is only the first of three bodies. The second is a suicide, a homeless man with a substantial bank account, but the third is a scion of the prominent Grieve family, an up-and-coming politician. The first two are parceled out to underlings (and lively, well-drawn characters they are) but Rebus gets young Roddy Grieve, killed on the parliament grounds. Only trouble his, Rebus is seconded to a young department protégé, an earnest, desk-bound go-getter (and ultimately a marvelous, scary character). For loner Rebus, this is no way to work.

Gruff, direct (some would say confrontational), with a sardonic sense of humor, Rebus is as hard drinking and broody as ever. Educated hunches and police footwork takes him and his team into the roughest alleys and pubs as well as the highest echelons of the privileged. In the intrigues and intricacies of high finance and corruption, Rebus begins to spy a pattern. But the unexpected release of Rebus' nemesis, crime boss Gerald Cafferty, exacerbate his difficulties with authority, threatening both case and career.

Though longer than Rankin's previous novels, there is no padding in the twisting, turning plot. Rankin ("Dead Souls," "Black and Blue") draws the reader into damp, gritty Edinburgh and Rebus, a man of dark depths, is the personification of the city. Well up to Rankin's award-winning standards, his vivid style has a trenchant immediacy.