{"id":2248,"date":"2020-10-05T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T01:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2248"},"modified":"2020-10-18T22:41:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T11:41:31","slug":"book-review-a-song-for-the-dark-times-ian-rankin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2248","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: A Song for the Dark Times \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Ian Rankin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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After taking a breather in 2019, John Rebus is back for dark times indeed. In a post-Brexit-vote but pre-COVID world, is there room for a retired detective for whom everything is changing too fast? Ian Rankin returns with his most enduring character and his two sidekicks still on the force, for whom he feels varying degrees of affection, and none of them are found wanting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Change is afoot in John Rebus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 life. After spending 22 books in his upstairs apartment, Rebus relocates to the ground floor. Before he can get the chance to settle in and get a good brood on, he is called away to Tongue, where his daughter is suspected in the disappearance of her partner. On the home front, Siobhan Clarke teams up with straight shooter Malcolm Fox to investigate the murder of a Saudi princeling, but Fox may be getting too cosy with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big Ger\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cafferty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebus has been in some form of retirement for approximately seven books now and is a somewhat ailing old man, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no surprise that Rankin had to make it personal this time. Samantha Rebus has never been much of a character in Rebus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 orbit, by design: his focus has always been on the job to the exclusion of almost all others. She was introduced as essentially a prop in Hide & Seek, <\/em>back when Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tastes in murder, mayhem, and crime were decidedly more Catholic, and since then she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had little more than a walk on role. When Rankin gives himself a chance to flesh out the character, we realise that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that nice herself \u00e2\u20ac\u201d stubborn as her father and, frankly, a murder suspect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, given that Rebus has a new apartment, a dog that he is devoted to, and is finally starting to take his health seriously, Rankin is taking another step towards softening the man by making him have to demonstrate care for his family. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an unwelcome development, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely room in his life for more human connections. It is clear that Rebus can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be directly involved in police work much longer \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a million years old, but you can hear him creaking as you turn the pages \u00e2\u20ac\u201d so it is curious to see what Rankin can do without explicitly putting him completely out to pasture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Rebus book, the murderer is not always someone who was a prime suspect or a vocal presence, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite all right: Rankin has always been good at the reality of detective work leading to mundane but reasonable conclusions (with the obvious except of Tooth & Nail<\/em>, which has the most memorably ludicrous \u00e2\u20ac\u0153eureka\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moment in Rebus history). The Tongue section of A Song for the Dark Times <\/em>is neatly constructed, and the people there are quite literally accommodating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings the reader to the actual paid police work. Siobhan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case is rather more standard than Rebus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, which means that the enjoyment derived is entire from the way that the ensemble handles it. Siobhan is grating against a professional ceiling that may have been placed there for her by Rebus, and she and Rankin both continue to be ambivalent towards Malcolm Fox, who may be in over his head. Most curious about this instalment is that Cafferty does not interact with Rebus at all, instead choosing those who might be more useful to him. Ever since Cafferty \u00e2\u20ac\u0153died\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Exit Music<\/em>, he has provided an interesting through line for the series that was lacking before; Rankin doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t resolve his story here, but tantalises nonetheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most disappointing moment in A Song for the Dark Times<\/em> is Siobhan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fault rather than Rankin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s: charged with the care of Brillo, Rebus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dog, she drives him to a nightclub and leaves him in the car with the window cracked while conducting an interview. Even on a dark and cold Edinburgh night, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still not on. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the worst that one can say about the book (for those concerned, Brillo emerges from these pages unharmed).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One does not have to have read the entire 23 volume Rebuscycle to enjoy A Song for the Dark Times<\/em>, although it would help. Like the best detective fiction, Ian Rankin gives us a hard-headed detective and gives him something to gnaw at until he comes out with something approximating a solution. With superb character work, a side of UK history rarely explored in popular fiction and, as always, the promise of more<\/em>, A Song for the Dark Times <\/em>is an exemplar of both Rebusand crime novels alike. A deadly combination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After taking a breather in 2019, John Rebus is back for dark times indeed. In a post-Brexit-vote but pre-COVID world, is there room for a retired detective for whom everything is changing too fast? Ian Rankin returns with his most enduring character and his two sidekicks still on the force, for whom he feels varying degrees of affection, and none of them are found wanting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2252,"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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","has_thumb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Dark-Times-Crop.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-Ag","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248","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=2248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2253,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions\/2253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}