http://avadhutrecommends.wordpress.com/Summary –A pair of skeletons revealed under the concrete slab of a pub, a dead immigrant, a missing young woman, a dead rapist, a Glasgow thug operating a nightclub in Edinburgh – so many disparate threads, each one proving to be elusive. So it is up to Rebus and Siobhan to try to unravel these mysteries, which run parallel and at one point get entangled.Review –Rebus is out of St. Leonard’s, his old hunting ground. With the reorganisation of CID, he and his protégé Siobhan are now operating out of Gayfield Square police station. This means a new boss and new set of colleagues, but it hardly bothers Rebus. He is as loner as ever. Nearing his retirement, Rebus is “surplus to requirement”, result of his infamous reputation and years spent in perfecting insubordination. So when an immigrant Kurd is killed in what looks like a race crime, Rebus is the only one who is serious about the investigation. With his usual tenacity, he dives into the case. Meanwhile, Siobhan is trying to find out why two stolen medical skeletons were buried under a pub. Then there is a missing young woman, whose elder sister took her own life after she was raped. Her rapist is now out of prison and when he turns up dead, the case takes a new turn. In the meanwhile in their quest to trace the missing girl, Rebus and Siobhan land at a nightclub run by son of a dead Glaswegian gangster. And behind all of this, there is shadow of Rebus’s old nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty, looming as large as ever.The story revolves mostly around two locations, Knoxland, a bleak estate where immigrants are given refugee town council and the town of Banehall, whose main economic benefactor is Whitemire – a prison, now turned into a detention centre for asylum seekers. In the course of investigation, Rebus also comes face to face with slave trade of the immigrants. The mysteries are intertwined as usual and in the end Rebus and Siobhan manage to solve all of them.The series is now nearing its end and I am still not sure why I like Rankin so much. But I like his books nevertheless; like million other readers. Not all the books in the series are great, but a mediocre Rebus book will still be better than many others on any day for me. Rankin uses mysteries to tackle tricky social issues and Rebus highlights the fallacy, irony and futility of everything with his usual cynicism.And then there is John Rebus. I am enamoured by his sarcasm, his little antics and mind games and above all his wry humour. I am also growing fond of Siobhan, who is gaining influence in the books. She is counterbalance to Rebus’s somewhat recklessness and yet I can’t help noticing that she is slowly turning into another Rebus, not as cynic and loner yet, but the early signs are definitely there. Rebus has a penchant for 60’s jazz and for a novice in western music like me; the books also serve as a ready reckoner of Jazz bands. By the way, did you know that there was a famous Jazz band in 70’s named “The Mahavishnu Orchestra” after the Hindu god? I certainly did not.
Wat populariteit betreft is Ian Rankin de onbetwiste Pieter Aspe van de Britse misdaadliteratuur. Hij is de hipste, de bekendste, de best verkopende. Naar verluidt gaan van elke nieuwe roman meteen zo’n 500.000 stuks over de toonbank en is zijn Rebus-reeks alleen al goed voor 10% van de verkoop van de Britse crime lit. Het opmerkelijke is dat populariteit hand in hand blijft gaan met kwaliteit. Hoewel het niet allemaal meesterwerken zijn en de boeken hier en daar wel sporen vertonen van routine, is de Rebus-serie bijzonder consistent. Ik ben ze einde jaren negentig beginnen lezen, ben intussen bij het vijftiende deel beland, en een slecht of zelfs matig boek zat er niet tussen. Black & Blue en The Falls waren tot voor kort mijn favorieten, maar Fleshmarket Close (2004) kan eigenlijk toegevoegd worden aan het schavotje.Het bevat alle klassieke elementen - dat solitaire, met een drankprobleem vechtende personage, de grauwe Schotse setting, de verschillende politiediensten die elkaar voor de voeten lopen en het leven zuur maken, de onder- en bovengronds opererende misdaadorganisaties, de lijken en verdwijningen, etc - maar de lat werd deze keer hoger gelegd. Fleshmarket Close is dik, complex en verweeft verschillende verhaallijnen, maar het gebeurt met een indrukwekkende finesse. Zo blijkt dat de moord op een illegaal, de verdwijning van een tiener en het plots opduiken van twee skeletten in een kelder geen lossstaande feiten zijn, maar met mekaar in verband gebracht kunnen worden. De obsessie met wiskundig perfect uitgedachte intriges is steeds een kenmerk van de Britse misdaadliteratuur geweest , maar net zoals Amerikaanse tegenhanger George Pelecanos deed met Washington, DC, en Michael Connelly met Los Angeles, zo ook schrijft Rankin moderne stadsromans.Het hedendaagse Edinburgh blijkt ook een oord van verderf te zijn, met georganiseerde misdaad achter de façades en corruptie en armoede die behoren tot de orde van alledag. In deze roman wordt de stad de setting voor een dissectie van de Britse immigratiepolitiek en het illegalenprobleem, waardoor het naast een spannende thriller en het zoveelste deel van het verhaal van een onverbeterlijke held/loser ook een realistisch politiek drama is. Het is dan ook jammer dat ik na The Naming Of The Dead (2006) en Exit Music (2007) op m’n honger zal mogen zitten, aangezien die laatste met het pensioen van Rebus ook het einde van de reeks zou betekenen. (****)
What do You think about Fleshmarket Close (2015)?
One of the great attractions of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series is that the stories deal with real issues of modern life. The central issue here is desperate immigrants from many hotspots in the world who make their way to Britain's shores, and particularly to Rebus' Scotland, to try to find asylum and to make a life for themselves and their families. They are easy prey for those who would take advantage of their desperate situation to make a profit for themselves or for their own carnal pleasures. This is the seedy world of Fleshmarket Alley.When one of the asylum seekers, a Kurdish journalist, is brutally slain, the immigrant issue becomes a conundrum requiring the skills of the doughty inspector and his intrepid accomplice DS Siobhan Clarke. As always in a Rankin mystery, there will be many detours and subplots along the way. Nothing is ever simple in these stories, but the experienced reader of Rebus mysteries knows that these two will perservere until the bitter end. Until they achieve their "result."I find it hard to put into words just what it is about these police procedurals that is so satisfying. I'm not normally a great fan of the genre, but this series grabbed me from the very first one, Knots and Crosses, and it has never lost its grip. Each new entry is fresh and engrossing and could easily stand on its own, but the pleasure in reading is much richer for having read the series from the beginning and having watched Rebus' evolution along the way. He is now nearing the end of his career with Lothian and Borders Police and it can't happen too soon for his superiors. They are fed up with his insubordination and tendency to do things his own way, and they keep dropping broad hints that maybe it is time for him to retire. Hints like the fact that there is no desk available for him at his new Gayfield Square headquarters to which he and Clarke are sent when CID is reorganized. What they don't seem to realize is that it will take more than the lack of a desk to stop the force of nature that is Detective Inspector John Rebus. He may be nearing the end of the line, but he'll go in his own good time and in his own way. And we lucky readers get to go along for the ride.
—Dorothy
Another in the Inspector Rebus series.[return][return] Due to reorganization of his old precinct, Rebus and other St. Leonard's CID personnel have been reassigned; he and Siobhan Clarke are now operating out of Gayfield Square and find themselves in new territory. The central plot concerns the murder of an asylum seeker in an Edinburg housing project that has become housing predominantly for immigrants, many of them probably illegal; the murder is being treated as a race crime and Rebus is the only one who is serious about the investigation. Meantime, Siobhan has been drrawn into searching for a missing teenager, the younger sister of a young woman who was brutally raped and murdered a few years back; the case winds up involving the murder of the rapist and a community that is perfectly happy to cover up for whoever did it.[return][return]While both threads are separate, they do intertwine since the course of both investigations lead to Edinburg's sex industry, the world of strip clubs and pornography. The social issue of Scotland's asylum seekers is central to the plot and very well handled. [return][return]The plot is complex enough to satisfy the most demanding readers. Rankin really writes novels that happen to be police procedurals. But in this one, the reader gets more than a hint that both Rebus AND Rankin are getting tired of the chase.
—Joyce Lagow
This is number 15 in this much-beloved series. I have enjoyed each and every one of the previous books in the series. Rebus is a character that is so realistic that I can't help thinking that if I walk into the Oxford Bar I'll see him there drinking a whiskey and smoking a cigarette. That is Ian Rankin's gift-drawing realistic, three-dimensional characters and crafting very tricky mysteries around them. In this book Rebus is working with another DI. The body of a young immigrant man was found in a dark alley in one of Edinburgh's more seedy neighbourhoods. At first glance it looks like a hate crime, but as Rebus digs, he finds it is much more complicated than it first appears. Siobhan has her own case to pursue. The body of a convicted rapist is found in another dark alley in another seedy neighbourhood. These two quite separate cases turn out be connected in some way. This series continues to satisfy at all levels. Great storytelling, wonderfully intricate plotting, remarkable characterization of both the old, loved characters, as well as new ones and a friendship between two colleagues that seems to strengthen more with each book. Can't wait to read the next one.
—Shirley Schwartz
