{"id":2225,"date":"2020-09-17T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T02:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2225"},"modified":"2020-10-03T17:47:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T07:47:00","slug":"book-review-westwind-ian-rankin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2225","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Westwind \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Ian Rankin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Westwind<\/em>: the Ian Rankin novel that got away. Published to little fanfare and few reviews back in 1990, Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attempt at the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the sort of high-tech thriller that sold by the pallet-load in airports and railway stations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d disappeared without trace after scarcely receiving a first printing. Fortunately for Rankin, the Rebus <\/em>novels started to pay off, rendering Westwind <\/em>a mere footnote until 2019. An unlikely cocktail of Twitter queries and, presumably, the concept of a calendar year looming without a new Rebus <\/em>title, lead to Westwind <\/em>being reissued, slightly renovated and given an introductory segment more interesting than the book that follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In an alternate 1990 where the US is withdrawing from Europe, satellite technician Martin Hepworth is party to a cascade of events: the crashing of a space shuttle that left only one astronaut alive, the temporary loss of contact with his base\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s satellite, and the sudden leave of a colleague who had noticed something was wrong. The moment Hepworth decides to investigate, he is marked for death, and he has to decide precisely which government agencies he can trust to keep him on the right side of the mortal coil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A delight of reading early Rankin in reissued format is that he often invites the readers to look through the window of his mind at the time of reading. Westwind <\/em>was written at approximately the same time as Tooth and Nail<\/em>, and both novels were forged in the crucible of his London residency. Where Rebus had the luxury of hating London on Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behalf, Hepton is a native and doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realise the misery he resides in. Rankin tells us of his career frustrations and lets us know what might have been if Rebus didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take off as he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one drawback of the foreword is that Rankin points out that at one point the novel was titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Coffin Burial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, a name whose etymology entirely escapes him. Armed with this knowledge, it is impossible not to notice the multiple iterations of this phrase littered throughout the book, and even when its significance is explained it has been reduced to meaninglessness. While \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Westwind\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a marginally better title, Rankin should not have tried to justify it so brazenly in the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rankin considers Watchman <\/em>to be his spy novel, but Westwind <\/em>would comfortably also match that designation. What likely renders it a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153techno-thriller\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (the technology painstakingly researched in the children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s section of the library) is that Hepton is something of an everyman thrust into a sea of assassins, double crossers, and \u00e2\u20ac\u201d hilariously \u00e2\u20ac\u201d uniformly villainous Americans. Naturally, Hepton is the least interesting character of the ensemble, but the astronaut who forms one point of the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s distant love triangle is a close second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Dreyfuss is a fascinating character because he is the only person in the book ever to have been to space, and nobody likes him. At the time of publication, literally no British person had ever left Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s atmosphere, and as of September 2020 only seven Britons total have been in space, but Dreyfuss is the novel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pariah, a fall guy whose biggest crime is that he failed to die when it would have been politically expedient. The way that Rankin layers on the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flaws as a subpar space cadet whose main ability is to take up space is funny \u00e2\u20ac\u201d perhaps unintentionally so, but welcome nonetheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westwind <\/em>putters along at an amiable pace, and Hepton picks up a merry troupe that includes the woman hell bent on killing him and, that classic, the slightly older gentleman whose unassuming nature belies his ability to snap someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neck and dump their corpse in an airport toilet. Far ahead of his time, Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s female characters are the most consistently competent, and he does absolutely nothing to sexualise them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westwind<\/em> works best as a time capsule, as there is nothing described between its pages that is not humorously dated. The spy craft is remarkably analogue, and there are few problems that can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be solved simply by killing someone; the most fun Rankin has, other than sneering at Dreyfuss, is by having people play their hands catastrophically too early. The conclusion is optimistic in a way that, thirty years later, is difficult to read as anything other than na\u00c3\u00afve and, though the tribalism at the villains\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 heart is unlikely at best, the sort of surveillance culture Rankin warns against has become far worse than anything he could have imagined thirty years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westwind <\/em>is a novel that is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153better than you think it is\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but it is clearly not where Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart or talents lay. Its curious nature and Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thoughtful dissection thereof justifies its return to print., but Westwind <\/em>is not a long lost treasure finally restored to the light so much as a cheerful throwback to what publishing used to be. Rebus is back in 2020, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s welcome, but you could do worse than Hepton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Westwind: the Ian Rankin novel that got away. Published to little fanfare and few reviews back in 1990, Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attempt at the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the sort of high-tech thriller that sold by the pallet-load in airports and railway stations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d disappeared without trace after scarcely receiving a first printing. Fortunately for Rankin, the Rebus novels started to pay off, rendering Westwind a mere footnote until 2019. An unlikely cocktail of Twitter queries and, presumably, the concept of a calendar year looming without a new Rebus title, lead to Westwind being reissued, slightly renovated and given an introductory segment more interesting than the book <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","has_thumb"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-zT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Westwind-Crop.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2232,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions\/2232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}