Set In Darkness (Inspector Rebus)

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Ian Rankin

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Pages: 496 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0752837087

Pub: Orion

Pub date: 2000-11-02

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 64826

Editorial Review:

Two masked men abduct women on their way home from singles bars; a mummified corpse turns up bricked into a fireplace in one of devolved Scotland's new government buildings; a prospective New Labour candidate is battered to death; and Inspector Rebus's old antagonist Ger Cafferty is allowed home from prison to die of cancer...Ian Rankin's gloomy new crime novel has all the usual ingredients of his Rebus series--Rebus's drinking, his messy relationships with women and his inability to get on with his superiors and more ambitious equals are traits more usually associated with private eye novels than with police procedurals, but they help explain why a cop with Rebus's high clear-up rate has avoided promotion to a desk.
Everyone told him that this was a sign, that he was here because the chiefs at the Big House had plans for him. But Rebus knew better. He knew that his boss had put his name forward because he was hoping to keep Rebus out of trouble and out of his hair...And if--if--Rebus accepted without complaining and saw the assignment through, then maybe the Farmer would receive a chastened Rebus back into the fold.
The Edinburgh atmosphere--from the forced politeness of smart dinner parties to the hair-trigger violence of slum pubs--is as admirable as ever, and Rebus's capacity for working things out slowly in his own head remains as plausible as ever as a description of a particular kind of dogged intelligence. Like several books in this series, this is also an intelligent novel of the New Scots Politics--part of what makes Rebus both a successful investigator and doomed to offend the powerful is his unerring instinct for the scandalous and the corrupt. --Roz Kaveney

Reader Reviews:

Rich and complex - a cut above your average thiller (10/11 people found this helpful)

I have read about 6 of the Rebus books and this is easily the the best of the lot. A huge array of characters all unique and identifiable, a complex plot with a stunning ending and as ever the stong sense of a location in time and space all add up a brilliant novel.

As others have said one of the great things about this book is the interaction between the characters I can't imagine any other 'genre' writer could handle such a large cast so well. Combine this with a strong plot which will hold your attention to the last page and you have an outstanding book.

Rebus wins again (1/2 people found this helpful)

I agree with previous posting that the books shuld be read in sequence, it gives a better understanding of the history of the characters and how their lives entwine...

The book itself is not my favorite Rebus to date, however it is still hugely enjoyable.

Good. But not the best. (2/4 people found this helpful)

Basically, the summary says it all. this is a good addition to the Rebus series, but it is not the best one.

The plot, to be completely honest is a bit boring at times. And there were times when i just couldn't care less who did it. So, why four stars? Plainly because the writing is good, and even though this book has it's bad points, the good points probably outweight them.

I think that you should read this book, but do not expect too much.

Where snakes in the ground go absolutely free (2/4 people found this helpful)

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?

Not the best in the Rebus Series (0/0 people found this helpful)

Not Rankin's best effort. The ending was weak, and slightly contrived. Hopefully there'll be return to form with the next one, as I'm normally a massive fan of the Rebus books. If you're going to read the Rebus books, you will get the most enjoyment form readng the series in order.

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