Customer Reviews

Doors Open

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

In the middle of reading Doors Open and feeling let down by Mr. Rankin's plot and characters I checked into Amazon to see what reviewers and readers were saying about the book. There was such a divergence with newspaper reviewers hailing it as light hearted and an "Oceans Eleven," and readers virtually slamming it. I went back and finished Doors Open.
I welcomed the New York Times book review this morning to see what Marilyn Stasio, the crime story reviewer would say. After reading her review I realized that what the news media reviewers are doing is giving Mr. Rankin the benefit of his past very good novels, while accepting that he is playing with a new genre.
Those of us who so enjoyed the Rebus series, find this novel so totally different that it is like wearing one's shoes on the wrong feet.
Open Door is the story of a robbery gone awry and with players who are mostly out of their element either because they are not practiced criminals or very expert about art. The Rebus series allowed Mr. Rankin to thoroughly focus on character and the unending battle of good and bad in the police procedural while dropping in the social and political changes in Scotland and Edinburgh. His writing is as good as ever with many clever descriptions and conversations. Unfortunately neither the plot nor the characters have the snap and crackle many of us have come to expect.

What a disappointment! This is a very half-hearted successor to the Rebus novels. The police are shadowy uninteresting characters, and the crimes, which begin with an elaborate and not-very-credible art theft, are perpetrated by a group of caricatures - rich collector, curator, drug-freak artist - none of whom seems to have any real rootedness in the complex social world that we have come to expect. The amateur criminals find themselves falling headlong into an abyss of professional crime, which again lacks most of the depth that Rankin has uncovered there before; for instance, there's a hired killer from Scandinavia who has about as much reality as a Batman villain. Ultimately, the police get everything sorted out, but it's more like the arrival of the cavalry in an old western than the gut-wrenching effort that Rebus used to go through. Even Edinburgh, which Rankin has contrived in the past to make interesting, has no real presence here at all. Door closed!

I came to this page while reading DOORS OPEN trying to find out if one of the artists in the book is fictional or not. I actually had the audio version of the book and could only make out "Mon" (it turned out to be the fictional Monboddo).

I was surprised to see the slough of negative reviews, most from Rankin fans disappointed not in the quality of the writing or story, but because John Rebus is not in it. This isn't fair, either to the author or to readers seeking to know if this is a worthwhile use of their reading time or not.

As another fan and reader of all Rankin's Rebus novels, I had another reaction to DOORS OPEN: I was a little weary of Rebus' self-destructive ways and enjoyed the new characters. (To be scrupulously fair to low reviewers, I may have two legs up on them in that I have both an excellent audio version and an interest in art forgery.)

Taken on its own, without knowing Ian Rankin had written DOORS OPEN, I suspect many who slapped it with low reviews would have rated it higher. Aren't they just glad that Rankin is writing another series, not retiring?

I hope Mr. Rankin realizes that many of his readers enjoyed the book very much and are looking forward to further post-Rebus novels.

I will even venture so far as to say that many of you low-star reviewers of DOORS OPEN should edit those reviews to reflect the book's very own merits, not just to vote your disapproval of the author leaving John Rebus behind. Most of you wouldn't have to change the review itself, an odd state of affairs. You've had years enough to know the last Rebus has come and gone. Aren't you just glad Mr. Rankin is still writing? Do you really expect any good writer to conform to your expectations? Remember Conan Doyle, forced to resurrect Sherlock Holmes when he was heartily tired of the character. They resulted in more good Holmes stories, but at what cost to the author?

I say if you like Ian Rankin's work, you should give him a chance to develop in new directions, and trust him to make it good. Shame on you for ganging up on him in a public forum that has such a profound effect on public opinion.

I must agree with the other reviewers to date. The premise for this book is pretty preposterous, and the execution is bad, almost unreadable. Rebus was always the most three dimensional character in the previous works. Subtract him and not much remains.

The above are the words of a key character in Ian Rankin's Doors Open. These words collectively describe the Edinburgh men, a banker, an art professor, and a computer software millionaire, who are the heart of the matter. These "three musketeers" have no prior criminal record, but they plot to rip off Scotland's National Gallery of Art. That is, they want to steal paintings. (They aren't interested in the gift shop.)

Rankin subtly and skillfully develops the tale. Things start heading south when a crude gangster is recruited for "muscle." This crude gangster is himself pursued by a monstrous debt collector.

It's all written in a refreshingly clear manner. It actually begins at the beginning and ends at the end. The author narrates in an almost conversational manner. No skipping around between first and third person. No irritating (blurry) flashbacks and flash forwards. No leaving the reader at the edge of a cliff at chapter's end and then not returning to cliff's edge until two or three chapters later. Rankin doesn't have to drop in arcane references and phrases that only he really understands. In other words, none of that stuff that authors do to fill space and make deadlines.

I knew very little about Edinburgh before reading this novel, so I enjoyed the good measure of local atmosphere that is woven into the story.

As for the painting heist itself, the reader must decide how plausible it all is. I found it to be clever and it held my interest. Rankin has a dry wit that often left me chuckling.

Highly recommended.

This is one of the worst crime dramas I have ever read. The tempo is slow, I was more than two thirds through the book before any real action took place. There is an imbalance of details - too much details on trivial things and too few on the important things. It seems to me the author was more interested in the city where plot unravels rather than the plot itself. The plot is weak and in certain parts not plausable. The worst is the ending which is a complete let down. Not worth the time

It always sad, and annoying for those who bought the book, to see a beloved author lose interest but continue to publish because his reputation is such that people will buy and the money is too hard to resist.

It is hard to believe that Doors Open was written by the same author as the Rebus novels. Despite being a huge Rankin fan and something of reading masochist who almost always tries to finish a novel once started I simply could not complete this book. That's how bad it is.

The plot is ridiculously implausible and the characters one dimensional. I feel betrayed by this third rate effort from an author who is capable of much better

Consider this cast of characters: a burned-out 37-year-old retired software millionaire, a gorgeous art gallery owner with a taste for retired software millionaires, a sleazy professor of art, a divorced and self-pitying banker facing up to the emptiness of his life, a bitter young art student with an extraordinary talent for artistic mimicry, a cynical mob boss, tattooed enforcer for a drug-running Hells' Angels gang, and an ambitious young police inspector. Now mix and match this motley collection of heroes and misfits, inject them (at different times and in different ways) with a plan for the "perfect crime," then shake, rattle, and roll. What have you got? Why, it's yet another in the endless succession of caper stories that spring from the minds of crime writers and producers of B-movies.

Yes, here is Ian Rankin writing the tale of a classic heist-where the loot is second-rate Scottish artwork. Heist stories, of course, are of three varieties: the ones where the plan unravels and the bad guys are caught; the ones where the plan unravels and most of the bad guys are caught except for a couple of unnaturally handsome people who walk off together into the sunset; and the ones where the good guys really turn out to be bad guys after all and nobody gets caught. Doors Open more or less fits into one of those categories. You'll have to read the book to find out for yourself which one. Unfortunately, it won't be much fun to do so.

Doors Open is a surprising disappointment from Ian Rankin, a Scottish writer of crime novels sometimes billed as the UK's best-selling author. Rankin previously wrote a series of 14 novels celebrating the cranky, anti-establishment Edinburgh policeman, John Rebus, and his sidekick, Siobhan Clarke. The claim of best-seller status isn't difficult to credit, since Rankin has written a total of 25 novels, three other books, and a slew of short stories since 1986 -- and the Inspector Rebus novels, at least, are tightly written, intricately plotted, psychologically credible, and a joy to read. Sadly, Inspector Rebus appears to have slunk off over the horizon in 2008 with the publication of Exit Music. I'll miss the curmudgeonly old guy!

(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)

Inspector John Rebus, Ian Rankin's usual protagonist, plays no part in his latest crime novel, but Edinburgh remains a vital part in this very unusual tale, plotted and written with the dexterity of a master of exciting and stimulating fiction. Three friends meet one day and hatch a plan to steal valuable artwork from the National Gallery by substituting clever forgeries.

The idea is planted by a professor of art, and it appeals to Mike Mackenzie, a rich but bored man who has sold his software company for the proverbial pot of gold. The third person is a banker friend of Mike's. The caper becomes complicated by other factors, including a gangster brought into the plot by Mike.

It would do the reader no service to further describe the story other than to suggest acquisition of the book itself, which would be its own reward. Highly recommended.

I liked Doors Open very much, so I was surprised to read the negative reviews. Ian Rankin's Rebus books were great, but they were a bit somber. This book was light and entertaining, with a lively pace. And the characters were interesting, too (the art student, the professor, the mogul, the banker, and the gangster). Here's hoping Rankin keeps writing!