A master of crime fiction moves on from his long-running series with a complicated new protagonist.
It was hard to pick up Ian Rankin’s 25th* novel, The Complaints, without wondering how a book billed as the possible launch of a new series would compare to the long-running Rebus series that had made Rankin a household name in the crime fiction world. In the back of my mind, I was keenly aware that unlike the reissue of Rankin’s excellent debut,The Flood, or even Rankin’s 2008 novel, Doors Open, in Rankin’s newest work he was treading dangerously close to Rebus’s territory with a new police procedural set in Edinburgh.
Rankin had waited a few years since the last Rebus book, but there was a real possibility that it would be hard to separate Rebus from the reading experience. Would readers feel his shadow with the turn of every page? Would they be consumed and distracted by the inevitable comparisons between the protagonists?
If Rebus was omnipresent, for me it was the irony of knowing that at another time, he would probably have been the focus of one of Fox’s investigations.
Malcolm Fox works in The Complaints; his job is to investigate other officers. As as a result Fox is generally loathed by most of the police department.
From the first page of the book, Fox’s alienation within the department is evident. It may be a coincidence that Edinburgh is covered with a blanket of snow at the start of the book, but it serves to amplify the sense of isolation. Snow can inhibit travel, can confine people to their homes, and prevent us from doing the things we normally do. The presence of snow on the ground reflects both Fox’s present situation at the start of the book, as someone alienated from other departments, and foreshadows the situation he finds himself in later, when he’s suspended, unable to do his job and has limited access to information.
Superficially, the one thing Malcolm Fox and Rebus have in common is the animosity others have towards them, but the reasons are very different. Rebus is the lone wolf, the one throwing the system and protocol to the wind and disregarding orders whenever it suits him. Fox, on the other hand, is loathed because of the department he works for. He’s competent and compliant in his investigations, more inclined to follow protocol than ignore it. Fox’s natural inclinations seem to be to play by the rules, and it would be hard to accuse Rebus of the same.
It can be a challenge to make someone in Fox’s position likable. In American drama, officers who work for Internal Affairs and investigate other cops tend to be portrayed almost as villains, people who put the rules ahead of the situations that sometimes require cops on the street to step outside the boundaries to save a life. As a result, what lurks behind Fox isn’t Rebus’s shadow, but lingering questions about what makes him want to investigate other cops. Why focus on bringing down other officers instead of the “real” criminals?
Any concern that Fox’s job would deter readers was eradicated by the nature of Fox’s investigation. When he’s assigned to investigate another cop as part of an international case involving child pornography, there’s little chance of thinking of Fox as someone who keeps cops from doing their jobs. If DS Jamie Breck, his target, is involved with child porn, he is a real criminal, and deserves to be caught. Before Fox even begins his active investigation, his status was elevated, simply because of the nature of the case.
Fox may have instantly become more likable and understandable, just through his assignment, but it can also be hard to get readers to embrace stories about crimes against children. Rankin seems to have solved one challenge by presenting himself with a new one, one he readily deals with through plot twists that quickly turn the investigation on its head. Fox’s life, and his career, are about to take a sharp turn, and shift the story down a different track.
Fox’s investigation is complicated by the murder of his sister’s boyfriend, Vince. Vince is unlikable from the start. He beat Fox’s sister, Jude, who has fresh bruises and an arm in a cast, a long list of excuses and no intention of admitting Vince assaulted her or ending her relationship with him. While Fox seems more than able to take the hard road on the job and be unlikable, he’s unable to confront his sister about the abuse. This is where Fox seems to take the easy way out, which may leave some wondering if it’s a contradiction, but it’s not surprising. As a cop, Fox seems to like his black and white world, but personal relationships tend to be murky and harder to clearly define. There are no rule books for how to talk to your sibling about being abused by their partner, or how to address your emotions and concerns. It’s possible to see some of Fox’s problems in his personal relationships – his failed marriage, the distance with his sister, his inability to bring his dad to live with him and guilt about that – as almost inevitable for a repressed Scottish male who’s unable to deal with his feelings.
In fact, at times, one might wonder how deep Fox’s feelings run. His divorce seemed completely amicable, handled rationally without bitterness or overwhelming regret. When you filter his inability to address his concerns with his sister through that lens, you see a man who finds balance through rules, who perhaps needs to enforce them at work in order to try to bring order to his personal life. Fox is also a recovering alcoholic, five years sober. There’s a sense that Fox is afraid he could lose control, and desperately needs to keep it together.
Great character-driven fiction centers on internal conflict, and The Complaints is no exception. Externally, Fox’s investigation implodes when his sister’s boyfriend is murdered, and he becomes a suspect. How does a cop from The Complaints convince other cops he hadn’t confronted Vince about the abuse of his sister? How can he arrest cops but do nothing about assault, even when the victim is a member of his own family? Other cops are eager to see an officer from The Complaints fall, and Fox’s past investigations have earned him enemies who are blinded by their desire for revenge.
To make matters worse, one of the investigating officers is Jamie Breck, the subject of Fox’s own investigation. As their paths cross, Fox finds himself outside the boundaries of normal procedure, and it isn’t long before he’s pushed completely out of his comfort zone, suspended, and forced to either sit back and wait, or find out the truth about who killed his sister’s partner and why, and what really prompted the investigation of Jamie Breck. Without the access he had as a cop he’s forced to rely on his gut, to decide who to trust, and Fox forms an uneasy partnership of sorts with Breck, who’s also been suspended.
The story addressed corruption, within the department and without, and the political aspect of the job. Breck has been fast-tracked for promotion, but trying to find out the truth about who killed Vince and why threatens his future advancement and his job. After reading The Complaints, I’m almost of the opinion that it’s much easier for Rankin to let go of Rebus than it is for him to avoid politics, and as a possible series set in ‘the complaints’, this seems like a natural forum for more of these types of stories, set as much against the backdrop of corrupt cops as Edinburgh, adding a layer of complexity to the investigations that affects them in unpredictable ways.
The Complaints is everything a great police procedural should be. Twists and turns keep the story from being anything but predictable, and the pace intensifies as the story progresses. The act of shoving Fox out of his comfort zone, forcing him to rely on his long-suppressed instincts, adds to the tension in the story. Were this a Rebus book, this would have been Rebus’s natural inclination, even if the case could readily be solved through standard procedure. With Fox, the line that separates wrong and right has been blurred, and when one has to trust in their gut they have to deal with the possibility of making mistakes with no rule book to blame, only themselves. For Fox, self preservation is a wonderful motivator that prompts him to change and grow over the course of the story.
The real question is whether the change will be long-lasting. I, for one, hope we’ll see a more self-assured Fox return in another novel, a Fox who’s willing to cast the playbook aside, along with his suspenders, follow his instincts and, occasionally, get his hands a little dirty. Fox is his own person, and he is worthy of his own forum for further exploration.
*26th if you count the novella, Death is Not The End, and this doesn’t include the non-fiction Rebus’s Scotland, the two short story collections, the graphic novel or the Quick Read, A Cool Head.
Sandra Ruttan is the author of the Nolan, Hart and Tain police procedurals. The third in the series, LULLABY FOR THE NAMELESS, was recently released in the US and dubbed “a vivid, noir portrait of the hard-scrabble small towns, ethnic tensions, dark urban corners, and deep forest environments of contemporary Canada, through the eyes of three fascinating, troubled investigators.” – International Noir Fiction
