Book Review: The Naming Of The Dead by Ian Rankin

Have you ever noticed that no matter how liberal you think you are, or radical you want to be, when you read a really good mystery story featuring police officers as the central characters you quickly sympathise with them and their lot? Then again, the characters who become our favourites do so because they are cops almost in spite of the "cop" mentality.

They don't play by the rules, have little or no use for authority, and can usually be counted on to have some interesting character flaw. Of course, also working in their favour is the fact that they generally ply their trade in some far-off exotic locale like Edinburgh, Scotland.

The streets of this august city are home to Detective Inspector (DI) John Rebus, Criminal Investigation Division (CID). Scottish mystery writer Ian Rankin has put him in these particular mean streets for 16 novels, starting back in 1982 with Knots & Crosses. I haven't read all the previous novels, but on every occasion that I've checked, Rebus has been just as intriguing as he was the first time.

The Naming Of The Dead, newly published by Orion Books, is once again set in Edinburgh and its surroundings, and Rebus is up to his neck in it as usual. But this time the stakes are raised, just ever so slightly, by the presence of a few hundred thousand demonstrators who have come to honour Bob Geldof's request to help eradicate poverty; the leaders of the G8 countries; and the variety of special police, hangers-on, and movers and shakers who are as much the camp-followers of these conferences as the protesters.

The week of July 5-9, 2005 promises to be as tiresome as the annual August Theatre and Fringe festival combined, as far as John Rebus is concerned, and he is thankful that his reputation for lacking tact and diplomacy is keeping him off centre-stage. It's therefore unfortunate that a routine murder investigation that looked like it had gone cold all of a sudden tossed up a clue that thrust him right in the thick of things.

Just a short helicopter's flight from Gleneagles, where all the G8 affiliates will be converging, a piece of cloth from the victim's clothing has turned up, along with what looks like samples of other victims' clothing. Instead of one victim, Rebus and Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke are now looking at the handiwork of a potential serial killer.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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