The Naming of the Dead, Ian Rankin (2007) Rebus #16
This is the first Inspector Rebus novel I’ve read, and it’s marvellous, in many ways. It’s first of all a great example of “Tartan Noir”. Most of the story happens in the shadows cast by the bright lights shone on a G8 summit in Edinburgh. Crime and squalor and corruption persist beneath the surface of Scottish society, even as world leaders gather for important conversations and photo opportunities.
It’s also genuinely a novel, with powerful themes of family ties, regret and grief. So many of the characters are essentially lonely and hurting, and clinging to thin strands that connect them to meaning and purpose.
It’s also an actual whodunnit. The presenting “problem” of the story, the apparent suicide of a Scottish MP at a G8-related function, provides the through-line for a story that weaves at least three other important sub-plots, but which ultimately comes around to a satisfactory, and surprising solution. All the “clues” were there, so there is no sense of the author pulling a fast one.
Fleshmarket Alley, Ian Rankin (2006) Rebus #15
After reading just two of his Rebus novels, I am starting to see why Rankin’s been considered a master of the crime novel. I chose the word “novel” in that sentence to emphasize that as I read it, Fleshmarket Close (They changed the name for the North American edition) is a novel in the best literary sense, that happens to have been crafted to tell a story about some incredibly well drawn characters, that we meet in the course of the investigation of crimes.
All is Well, Katherine Walker 2021.
Katherine Walker is a recently ordained Anglican priest who serves with the Royal Canadian Navy as a chaplain in training. She is also a member of Crime Writers of Canada, and her first novel, All is Well was a finalist in 2022 for the CWC Award of Excellence in the Best First Crime Novel Category.
The protagonist is Christine Wright, a recently ordained Anglican priest who had a previous career in the Canadian military. She was highly decorated, and scarred by her experiences, and the Department of National Defense, in cooperation with an Anglican diocese, have supported her transition to a new calling.
The hints we are given about Christine’s life before the military are enough to tell us she’d been traumatized long before her military service, and like many who enlist, found in the military a “family” with which to bond and identify.
She leaves the military, likely with the hope and aim of the church becoming her new matrix of belonging. Trouble is, she does not seem to actually want to be with people. (The only exception is her spiritual director.) She does easily let people into her life.
As a pastor, I found myself wondering if she somehow missed the day at seminary when they explained that parish work would inevitably require her to build and nurture relationships.
As an introvert, who quite enjoys his cave time, I could also understand the protagonist’s safe and restorative place being one of solitude.
Speaking of solitude, the title of the novel is a riff off the most famous quote from the 14th century English hermit and mystic, Julian of Norwich. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
The thing is, for Rev. Christine, this does not actually seem to be true, for most of the novel. From the outset, she is in trouble, and makes more trouble for herself, often for no apparent reason. She is careless of the needs of others, outright antagonistic to people, and self-sabotaging. She is also very difficult to like.
I like to like the protagonist. I want to root for them. I stuck with Rev. Christine to the end of the novel, hoping that somehow, the plot would come around to a place in which all manner of things could be well. I can report that we kind of, almost got there.
Katherine Walker brought the story to a place in which many things are better, but there remained for me a certain moral dissatisfaction, that had to do with the disposition of the criminal act(s) that were the inciting incident of the story. I can’t, or won’t say more about that, just because I wouldn’t like to ruin the read for anyone.