The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin

Review by Theodore Feit 
 

The G8 Summit Meeting in Scotland during July, 2005, provides the background for this latest—and perhaps penultimate---Rebus novel (Ian Rankin has been quoted as having started on the last but promising not to kill off the dour detective).  The setting allows the author to sound off on a variety of political topics:   third world debt, arms sales to these needy nations, poverty at home, big business vs. funds and programs for the impoverished.  Additionally, Rankin's knowledge of contemporary music—the combos, albums and songs of the past couple of decades--threads its way throughout.  And in the middle of the G8 conference are the London underground and bus bombings and the Live8 concert.

 

Days before the world leaders are to arrive, on Friday, July 1st, while at Gleneagles, site of the meeting, being briefed on the overwhelmingly tight security, Siobhan (Shiv) Clark , Rebus' Sergeant, wanders off to the woods where local residents hang mementos of their dear departed on tree branches.  There she finds a patch cut from a jacket worn by the victim of an unsolved murder (a bouncer at one of gangster Ger Rafferty's clubs, thus bring Rebus' arch enemy into play).  SOCO and forensics soon find two additional mementos of unsolved murders.  Are they related?  Clarke is given until the following Tuesday to work the situation as head of the inquiry, with Rebus assisting providing a role reversal of sorts and setting t he stage for his usual insubordination.

 

Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, a popular MP falls to his death from a rampart on the castle.  Is it an accident, suicide, murder?  Rebus draws the case.  Complicating the time line, Shiv's parents are attending the protests, and her mother gets hit in the face and taken to the hospital.  Believing this may have been an act of police brutality, she wastes a lot of her limited time looking for the culprit.

 

Needless to say, all these factors contribute to a tightly woven tale in the usual Rankin style which somehow drifts to a somewhat unsatisfactory and unfulfilling conclusion.  However, Rebus, being Rebus, provides us with hope that he'll never give up.  And, frankly, we hope that Rankin won't either.