Inspector Rebus, Part 1
Back in 1987, Scottish writer Ian Rankin wrote his first Inspector John Rebus novel, "Knots and Crosses." It was the first of around 16 novels (including one novella and a short story, which I haven't read... sue me). The story was simple, and a little more over-the-top than the books that followed (Rankin described it as Gothic), and Rebus wasn't technically an inspector (he was a Detective Sergeant). Quite simply, a serial killer is out in Edinburgh, killing little girls. There seems to be a personal connection to Rebus from his days in the British army. Beyond that, little is known about the killer.
As the story unwinds, clues are uncovered, chases ensue, and we begin to find out more and more about Rebus' world - his preferred pub (the Oxford), his relationship with Detective Sergeant Gil Templer, his brother Mickey, and two of his underlings, Siobhan Clarke and Brian... huh. I forget Brian's last name. For good reason, too, which I'll get into later.
According to Rankin, though, this was supposed to be it - a one-off. Finito. The ever-lovin' end.
But it wasn't.
Several years later, a sequel came out, "Hide and Seek." This time, Rebus has become a Detective Inspector. In fact, he will not get another promotion for the rest of the series. And "Hide and Seek" is the beginning of a change in tone for the series. While on the one hand, the murders and crimes covered in the series are more extravagant than your usual, say, drug murder, they are grounded in the general atmosphere of the prose. Sure, in "Hide and Seek," some kid seems to have been murdered in a Satanic ritual. But the murder itself is treated out of the ordinary, and the motivation is toned down. Instead of looking for Satanists, Rebus and crew look for drug dealers, criminals, the usual suspects. Buying into the idea that a cult is responsible would be beyond the pale.
And that's how Rankin keeps it in subsequent novels. Certainly, sometimes the villains are larger than life in some ways (for example, a recurring villain - Rebus' main villain - Big Ger Cafferty), but even their crimes are well within bounds of, dare I say it, the real world (yes, I dare say it).
Rebus himself falls into some of the typical cliches of a noir hero. He's hard bitten. He's had a rough life. He doesn't take well to authority. He's virtually estranged from his family, including his daughter, Samantha. He gets suspended a lot. He drinks like a fish for most of the series (he does get sober for about half a novel). His love life is hit or miss. Sometimes, he has to bend or even break the law to enforce it.
One of the more annoying cliches I found came later into the series, and that is that everything is connected (for example, in 2000's "Set in Darkness," three wildly different murder victims are connected (one is a homeless man, another is a politician from a rich family), not only by business, but by family bonds as well. And this kind of storytelling runs through, almost to the end of the series.
On the other hand, even though he's right 99% of the time, it doesn't always end well. More often than not, there are stalemates. He might find out the identity of the murder(s), he's not always able to bring them to justice (remember, he bends and breaks the law himself sometimes). So while the reader may get the satisfaction of knowing the identity of the villain,
Overall, this builds a compelling world, but one you could find anywhere else. However, there is one thing that Rankin stresses about Rebus that I've found rare in mystery novels: Rebus gets old.
Not only that, Rebus was aging in real time.
Don't get me wrong, we never really know his age. But when "Knots and Crosses" begins, Rebus is in his late 30s. By the time the latest novel, "Exit Music," rolled around, he was in his late 50s.
To me, this really made Rankin's series stand out. There was a progression for Rebus, and a built-in end point that Rankin was going to stick to. Now, this doesn't mean Rebus' adventures are over. There were at least two "outs" in "Exit Music" for Rebus to continue under the auspices of the police. But it was his last novel as a cop. I can't think of any series where this aspect of the character is so front-and-center (if I'm wrong, feel free to list the series... I'm talking mysteries here, not SF or Fantasy).
It makes for a compelling read the closer you get to the end of the series. How Rebus is treated changes over time. At the start, he's a good cop who sometimes bends the rules to get the bad guy. By the end of the series, he's a nuisance that the force can't wait to get rid of, no matter the results of his investigation. By the final two or three books, in fact, he's often not even the lead detective on a case.
