A life less threatened
Harriet Waugh
THE FALLS by Ian Rankin
Orion, £16.99, pp.399, ISBN 075282130X
Before the start of The Falls, Ian Rankin quotes from Philip Kerr's book The Unnatural History Museum, which appears to sum up his alcoholic hero Detective Inspector John Rebus's temperament: ...but rather my own temperament, the prototypically Scottish part of my character that was chippy, aggressive, mean, morbid and, despite my best endeavours, persistently deist. I was, and always would be, a lousy escapee from the unnatural history museum.
It is quite possible of course that Ian Rankin put this quote in more as a general summing up of Scottishness than as a description of Rebus's unhappy and contrary nature, but I do not think so. Nothing in Rebus's jaundiced view has changed since we last met him in Set in Darkness, a far more violent and emotionally desperate novel than The Falls.
In The Falls, Rebus and Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke take two separate strands in the investigation of a missing student. Flip Balfour, the daughter of an Edinburgh banker, set the alarm of her flat and was expected to meet friends in a pub. She never turned up. The most obvious suspect is her boyfriend David Costello with whom she regularly quarrelled and, in fact, had just done so when she disappeared, but other strands soon appear. A doll's coffin is found in the Falls of the title near her parents' home. Rebus discovers that there has been a history, going back 20 years, of doll's coffins turning up near where women had either gone missing or died. Until now no connection had been made between them. Rebus sees a sinister pattern, but his boss and ex-lover Jill Templer is sceptical.
Meanwhile Siobhan Clarke investigates an internet game that Flip was playing, in which someone called 'Quizmaster' was setting her tasks and clues. When Siobhan contacts 'Quizmaster' to ask who he or she is, and who else was playing the game and if Flip had met anybody through it, 'Quizmaster' replies that she can only have these questions answered by playing the game herself. Gradually Siobhan becomes hooked. There are more tangible suspects: a girlfriend who might have reason to dislike Flip and an old family friend whose relationship to Flip was questionable. A nice mix.
The book is also available on tape, read by James Macpherson (Orion Audio Books, /12.99, 4 tapes, 6 hours 20 minutes, ISBN 0752841726). Although Macpherson reads well, having a pleasantly penetrable Scottish accent, Rankin's impressionistic style means it is more difficult to follow the development of the investigation on tape than it is when reading. It was also irritating that the tape fails to announce new chapters. Chapters are not an accident in a novel. They form a natural break in the narrative, allowing the reader or listener to switch off for a moment and then proceed refreshed. But these cavils aside, The Falls, although less layered and tense (Rebus's career is only slightly threatened, and his life not at all) than some of Rankin's other novels, it is still very enjoyable and shouldn't be missed.
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