Customer Reviews

The Impossible Dead

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While many mystery writers have tried, few succeed in creating a second series. James Lee Burke's Billy Bob Holland is merely a westernized version of Dave Robicheaux and Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone is Spenser in a different guise. Ian Rankin, the master of Scottish noir, delivers. With John Rebus retired in EXIT MUSIC, one of the best books in the entire Rebus series, what would he do for an encore?

Enter Malcolm Fox. Fox is exactly the type of policeman Rebus would loath. He is member of the Professional Standards Units, formerly Complaints and Conduct, police officers who investigate other police officers. He does not drink (though an argument can be said that single malt might be more salubrious to one's health than a steady diet of Irn-Bru.) He suffers from a crisis of confidence in his work, even being tormented by his ailing father of not being a real detective doing real police work.

In the second book to feature Malcolm Fox, THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD, Rankin once again weaves a plot with many threads. Called in by Fife Constabulary to investigate the colleagues of disgraced detective Paul Carter, Fox and two other members of the Lothian and Borders Professional Standards Unit, Sergeant Tony Kaye and Constable Joe Naysmith, meet with the predicted closing of the ranks. During the course of the investigation Fox interviews the original complainant, Paul's uncle and retired policeman, Alan Carter. Alan now owns a security company and has also been retained to investigate a 25-year old cold case.

When Alan is murdered with Paul fit-to-order, Fox picks up the quest. Why was the death of lawyers and Scottish separatist firebrand Francis Vernal ruled a suicide and not properly investigated? Rankin now weaves his plot. There is the passion of homegrown separatist of the mid-1980s, a gaggle of groups, including those who used terror tactics to attempt to achieve their cause. Dark Harvest Commando actually used anthrax "mined" from Gruinald Island--the island itself the site of British experiments in biological warfare during World War II. The island became uninhabitable.

Fox continues to pull on the threads, uncovering a conspiracy of silence. Involvement of MI-5, police corruption that results in gun running and destruction of evidence, stonewalling by the powers that be, favors called in at the New Club--an exclusive men's club whose membership include the powerful and rich. In the midst of his investigation Fox also deals with family issues. His father lives in a retirement home, his dementia becoming more pervasive. His sister, unemployed and always distraught, brings more tension into the family struggles. While poring over a box of old family photos with his father, Fox discovers a cousin, Chris Fox, who was a member of the separatist movement and who died in an unexplained motorbike accident. Fox and his team succeed in solving a crime that no one wants solved, ultimately and ironically achieving justice.

The dialogue is sparkling. Perhaps it is the trio rather than the duo of Rebus and Siobhan in the earlier books that make the language so real.

As always there are enough topical events to not only anchor the book in time, but give it a strong sense of place: the fear of new terrorist attacks, the outrage at the release of Lockerbie bomber and mastermind Megrabi, and the much delayed launch of a new tram system in Edinburgh.

THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD is a strong effort by one of the true masters of the mystery genre. Malcolm Fox deserves to be judged and read as his own man.

Ian Rankin is my favorite Scottish author, I loved his Inspector Rebus, and am coming to like his Inspector Malcolm Fox. Like Rebus, Malcolm Fox is a loner, not really happy in this job, but he loves police work. Working for the 'Complaints' is a job looking into the lives of his colleagues and their misdeeds. No one likes them, can't say I blame them, but as Malcolm says, " Someone's got to do it."

Inspector Malcolm Fox's latest investigation is a doozy. He and his two fellow officers are in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy, about an hour out of Edinburgh. Here they are to look into a detective who has sexually assaulted several women. Of course, the small police force resents this intrusion, and do their best to cover up for the office, Paul Carter. Finding no help within the police building, they go outside and talk to everyone and anyone who might have known Paul and/or his family. Malcolm ends up talking to Paul's uncle, Alan a gruff old gent, but seems he is full of honesty and knows his stuff. He is the one who made the original complaint against Paul. Alan is an ex-officer. The team also talks to a woman who was assaulted, and instead of help, she becomes riled up and tires to slit her wrists. Nothing, it seems, is going right for this team. Alan Carter is found dead, suggestive of a suicide, but it is very suspicious. The investigation proceeds, and this is where some of the really interesting plot falls apart for me. The terrorism that plagues us today had its origins many years ago, and some of that is brought into this novel. The team apparently feels the same, and so does Malcolm's boss. They all want him to stop, no need to go further. But Malcolm is a perfectionist, and he must find the truth.

We are privy to some of Malcolm's personal issues in this novel. His father is ill, his angry, unemployed sister helps to care for him, and Malcolm must spend time getting to know both of them in a better light. Malcolm Fox is growing on me. This is the second novel of Ian Rankins about the Complaints. This department is OK, but I am becoming weary of the hostility that accompanies each story set. His reputation is growing, so soon, I hope, a station will welcome him, and we can move on.

Recommended. prisrob 11-19-11

A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Inspector Rebus Novels)

The Complaints

I gave The Complaints only 3 stars because I felt there was too much going on and found it confusing and complicated, yet I did enjoy it. I'm giving The Impossible Dead 4 stars because not only did I enjoy it but I thought the story, characters, and resolution were all sharply drawn and well interconnected. It does start out a little slow but soon reaches page-turner pace. Although we miss Rebus, let's give Malcolm a chance. He proved himself quite able in this one.

Ian Rankin is a master of character-based crime fiction, and his skills are prodigious in his latest Malcolm Fox novel titled, The Impossible Dead. Fox is a police detective outsider, assigned to the professional standards unit or internal affairs, called by most, the Complaints. Sent to the Fife Constabulary on a case, he ends up investigating murder, while being drawn back home to visit his ill father and repair his relationship with his sister. Fox is a complex individual that Rankin creates in ways that make him familiar, fully human, and prompts readers to care for what happens to him. Rankin provides realistic dialogue, a captivating plot, and deep character development that will appeal to all readers who like those elements in well-written fiction.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

I enjoyed the Rebus books. However, "The Complaints," left me really amazed at Rankin's willingness and ability to create something new. This astonishment has continued into this work, which is equally as good -- if not better -- than the first featuring Malcolm Fox. This work unfolds slowly, but picks up pace in a believable manner with characters are are all too real. (As an aside, I enjoy the fact that Fox isn't a heavy drinker; contrary to Rebus, who drank in many of the scenes from his books at an alarming rate).

The story here is well told and timely considering Scottish affairs. My favorite scene, without giving too much away, is when a once-committed Scottish nationalist comes all to close to a 16-year old teenager in the "new" Scotland. It is a perfect political statement that appears briefly in a really well-written mystery.

I must admit that I didn't like Ian Rankin's first offering in his new series about Malcolm Fox and The Complaints. That book was too stuffy with little excitement. In this second book in the series Rankin gets off to a very slow start, and I was ready to pitch the book after reading 60 some pages. But then Rankin picked up the pace. In retrospect the pace increased in speed and intensity because Fox was doing what Rebus almost always did. He wasn't following procedures. He was acting like a detective and not like a cop whose remit was to focus on complaints against the police. Perhaps the story line is a bit worn, that is, those who protested against the system/institution 20-25 years ago now have power because they are part of the system. Yet Rankin gives a Scottish twist to the story line and adds excitment through Fox's dogged pursuit of cold-case facts and tidying up of loose-ends.

I would highly recommend this book to fans of police procedurals. It is a pleasure to realize that John Rebus is back in the person of Malcolm Fox.

Fans of the John Rebus novels took a shine to Ian Rankin, as I did, so much so that now his name is bigger than the title of his books. But he has yet to write one that matched the interest of the Rebus novels, and The Impossible Dead does not either. It goes off to a very slow start, does pick up, then just crashes to the floor with a very unsatisfying finale. We are taken on a history tour of radical Scotland, and then led to believe that some of these same folks are not who they appear to be in their modern statuses. I might have believed a bit of it, but Rankin went far beyond credibility.

Scottish author Ian Rankin has put away his "Inspector Rebus" character and come up with a second series about an officer working in the "Complaints" section of the Lothian and Borders police department. That officer, Malcolm Fox, returns with his second outing after the first book, "The Complaints". "The Impossible Dead" is an excellent second book in the series.

The Complaints Department is an internal affairs section which investigates those officers who may be referred to as "dirty cops". Of course, the definition of "dirty cop" can range from simple lying about a case to murder committed by a police officer. Malcolm Fox and his two aides, Kaye and Naysmith, have been called from their Edinburgh office to police station in the town of Kirkcaldy, which lies north of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth. Some "irregularities" have been noted in three or four of the station's officers and what should be, at most, a two or three day investigation by Fox and crew, take on added seriousness as murders occur and the sins of the past come to life as part of the investigation. The past is 1985, a time of Scottish nationalism fervor, and a possible suicide/possible murder of a prominent lawyer active in the cause comes into importance in the murder investigation of 2011.

Ian Rankin does a good job introducing his new character, Malcolm Fox. He is a good cop with some family issues; a sick father and a slacker-sister. The reader "met" Fox and the secondary characters in the first book, and Rankin continues the introduction in the second. The murder case, and those involved in it, are nuanced enough to keep the reader's interest without much "shoot 'em up" action. I'm looking forward to the next in this new series, after having read all the "Rebus" series.

Ian Rankin is the master of the of the Scottish police procedural mysteries having written 17 novels featuring the flawed detective John Rebus. But the Rebus novels took place in real time and the actual Scottish police force has a mandatory retirement age, an age that the character was reaching. A lesser author would have kept milking a proven character and created a work around that would have killed the reality of the world they had so carefully created.

Lucky for us Rankin is one of the best. Rebus quietly retired and we were given Malcolm Fox, an Inspector in the Complaints department. In American terms he works for Internal Affairs, the police's police. You would be hard pressed to find an example of the complaints department ever being portrayed in a good light. They are always shown as the bad guys handcuffing the real police from doing their jobs. I used to work in quality control in a large manufacturing facility, much the same as that.

To his credit Rankin has given us another great character and even more solid mysteries to be solved. This is a large untapped area to be explored and my only wish was that he had made Fox 20 years old so he wouldn't age out so fast. This is the second book featuring Malcolm Fox (book one is The Complaints), so if you are looking to start with a great series and a writer who is a master of the filed, this is the series to get.

I will say I enjoyed this book more than book one, but that is because I spent too much time looking for Rebus in Fox reading it. They are really different characters. (Though I wouldn't mind seeing some Siobhan in a crossover)

Thanks to T Steven for this review.

The book began as a simple investigation into police wrong-doing but, like ripples spreading across a pond, the plot broadened, the body count rose, and the investigation reached back twenty years and into the halls of present power and privilege. Malcolm Fox takes some getting used to. He's not Rebus, but I'd love to see him get together with Rebus to tackle a tough case.