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Detective Refuses To Exit Gracefully

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By AL HUTCHISON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 5, 2008

"Exit Music," by Ian Rankin. (Little, Brown and Co., $24.99)

With mandatory retirement balefully staring him in the face, Detective Inspector John Rebus isn't about to go mellow on us. A brooding loner with few friends, he has no idea how he'll spend his days once he has left the Edinburgh police force, but Ian Rankin's readers know he's not going to go quietly into that final lap of his life. That's just not his style.

His superiors, so often irked by Rebus' penchant for doing things his own way, have rubbed his nose in it by putting his former subordinate Siobhan (pronounced "Shiv-on") Clarke - rather than Rebus - in charge of investigating the death of a dissident Russian poet, found beaten to a pulp on a deserted street. Relegated to a secondary role while anticipating his retirement, Rebus unleashes his nothing-to-lose attitude and pays for his contempt for the brass by being suspended.

"If I hear you've so much as crossed the threshold at Gayfield Square the police station where Rebus works, I'll demote each and every officer within your compass," his boss tells him. "What I want you to do, Rebus, is crawl away from here and tick off the days on the calendar. You're no longer a serving detective and never will be."

So there are really two stories in "Exit Music." One, of course, is about the murder of the Russian poet - oddly enough, while a Russian trade delegation is in Edinburgh - and the mysterious death of a man who had recorded one of the poet's recent appearances (and almost everything else his microphones could pick up). Are they connected? If so, how? Are ambitious politicians and greedy bankers involved? On that level, it is a traditional police procedural.

The other story is Rebus himself, and that's the one that those who read the first 16 Rebus adventures will especially relish, for he is an infinitely interesting character, fraught with quirks but blessed (cursed?) with a dogged persistence and a gift for connecting the dots even when, to others, they seem wholly unrelated. It's a gift that his former subordinate has yet to fully develop.

Can Clarke solve the murder without Rebus? No way. So she finds a way to accept his help without letting her superiors know. Adding interest is Todd Goodyear, a young policeman who insinuates himself into the investigation. Rebus is suspicious because Goodyear is the grandson of a man sent to prison years earlier, largely on the basis of testimony by Rebus. Also, Goodyear's brother is a drug dealer connected to an old and frequent Rebus adversary, M. Gerald "Big Ger" Cafferty, a notorious mobster.

Here's a key passage: "Cafferty, he realized, stood for everything that had ever gone sour - every bungled chance and botched case, suspects missed and crimes unsolved. The man wasn't just grit in the oysters, he was the pollutant poisoning everything within reach."

In future Rebus novels - he may have retired, but the series surely will continue - perhaps Cafferty will be a central figure. The detective's fans are not yet ready for Rebus to vanish into literary history.

Al Hutchison of Citrus County is a freelance writer.

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