Mark Gilroy

Bringing Books to Life!

John Rebus: The Detective I Hate to Love – and Love to Hate

John Rebus is the literary detective I hate to love.

John Rebus: churlish, self-destructive … brilliant!

John Rebus returns in the 18th full novel featuring the difficult but successful Edinburgh detective.

I’ve been reading Ian Rankin’s John Rebus novels for close to a decade and have always had a love-hate relationship with this Edinburgh detective. I’m not alone. Rebus’s cynical, impulsive, abrasive, self-destructive ways can play like fingernails on a chalkboard, making it hard for all but a few of the other characters to tolerate, much less “like” John – (poor DS Siobhan Clarke, how does she put up with him?).

But despite Rebus’ expertly drawn flaws, the curmudgeon gets his hooks in you. And it becomes obvious, anyone who tries as hard as Rebus to prove he doesn’t care about anyone or anything has to be hiding something … like how much he cares.

When Rankin retired Rebus in Exit Music – the 17th Rebus novel – and introduced a new Edinburgh character (Malcolm Fox) in (and of) The Complaints (think Internal Affairs in U.S. police terms) – it felt like a huge loss. Rebus hadn’t run his course – and of course, Big Ger Cafferty, king of the Edinburgh underworld, was out of jail and needed someone to keep a careful – and obsessive – eye on him. There are lead characters that grow more and more weary with each passing novel – but Rebus was already worn out and washed up when we first met him. If the chain-smoking hadn’t killed him yet, why put him out to pasture?

Maybe Rankin planned for retirement to do to Rebus what Cafferty considered doing countless times but never did. (Grudging respect? A sense of kinship?) I also knew I’d miss the old school rock and roll or blues music suggestions. It’s always been a bonus to read through what’s on Rebus’ playlist in each novel, though he still favors his LPs with the comfortable hiss and pops between tracks over CDs or digital music (horrors!) for his late night melancholy as he looks out the window of his flat, a quickly disappearing bottle of Lagavulin at his side.

Standing In Another Man’s Grave was a fabulous vehicle to bring Rebus back where he belongs, in the middle of a bloody crime scene. Interestingly, I thought Rankin drew a bit much from a theme and process found in my least favorite Rebus novel, Fleshmarket Alley –  (Rebus took a strong and clear and moral political stance, which I thought was out of character – he normally couldn’t be bothered with what the bloody politicians were up to unless it was murder). But having him work as a civilian investigator on cold case files – including a missing person case that may have multiple and current connections – creates the conditions for a triumphant return – even if his boss wishes he would crawl back under a rock.

I would note that Rankin has done as good or better of a job keeping Rebus true to form as any series novelist. That’s why reviewing an individual book doesn’t seem as important to me as asking if Rebus is really back. Is he? He’s still loathed and feared by colleagues and criminals alike. He still won’t give you the time of day unless you have something he needs – then he has all the time in the world. He’s still the character I hate to love or love to hate most in my commercial crime reading. But even if he has one foot in the grave – or both in another man’s grave – he’s back, and that’s what matters.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami – A Review

review of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

First things first. The title has nothing to do with IQ. The first character is the number 1 so the title is a play on George Orwell’s 1984. Just in case you were wondering if I selected the title because of a possible correlation in title and my intellect!

If you aren’t familiar with Japanese author Murakami, his novels are critically acclaimed – he has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize and many others – and are a fantastical mix of surrealism and a rich (sometimes dense) detailing of everyday life. He consistently deals with themes of loneliness and alienation, the self and reality (and especially perception/imagination and reality). 1Q84 tackles all that and adds acute questions of the-ends-justify-the-means murder, religion and cults, destiny, sexual abuse, revenge, and parallel realities. Oh, it takes a while to catch on, but first and foremost, it is a love story. Really.

Was it listening to Janacek’s Sinfonietta that sent Aomame (“sweet pea”) into another world with two moons? Did Tengo see the same two moons when he rewrote Fuka-eri’s crude draft of Air Chrysalis? (And by the way, was that a story from the fevered imagination of a 17-year-old girl or was she describing things that actually happened?) Will either of them survive the revenge of a cult group called Sakigake and the brilliant and relentless pursuit of Ushikawa – a man with a large misshapen head that shouldn’t be able to follow anyone without being noticed? And what of the “Little People” – who seem to hold special powers in 1Q84 and that seem to be looking for a bridge to 1984 – are they neutral or as malevolent as we suspect? And the big question: did Aomame and Tengo have to enter 1Q84 to find each other after 20 excruciating years of separation from each other and disconnect from the world around them? I don’t think it’s a spoiler alert to say that they became soul mates at age 10.

Enough. You’re with me or not. If I’ve scared you off completely, don’t run away before reading the last sentence of this paragraph. If you’ve read other reviews I’ve written what you might have already discovered is I don’t actually review books – I recommend books. Sometimes quite different books.  I know Murakami is not for everyone – though 1Q84 sold a million copies in Japan alone – and I’ll have to admit, it’s not my usual fare. But I recommend this book for its dense, other-worldly beauty – reading it creates that curious sensation of wanting (even needing and willing) it to be done and to never end.

The original Japanese version was published in 2010 and the English translation was introduced in 2011. I read the lovely boxed set (very reasonably priced on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and others) that was given to me as a gift by my son Merrick.

How the Irish Saved Civilization

How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. Anchor Books.

In 406 A.D the Rhine River froze solid – and the barbarians crossed this temporary bridge to strike one of the final blows to a lazy, corrupt, and aging empire. When Alaric, king of the Visigoths, showed up at Rome’s gates in 410 A.D., the citizens still didn’t know the end was at hand. Unable to defend themselves – it was a lot of effort after all – they negotiated a “sack” to spare the city from bloodshed:

“So they kept their lives, most of them. But sooner or later they or their progeny lost almost everything else: titles, prosperity, way of life, learning: especially learning. A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries are maintained. It is not the world where learned men have the leisure to become more learned.”

While working through Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for my nightstand reading, I realized I needed a shorter “boost” to keep going, so I decided to reread Thomas Cahill’s much heralded work that shows the disappearance of learning, scholarship, and culture from the European Continent from the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne. All the great works of western civilization might have been lost were it not for the fact that as the Continent became illiterate, one small “unconquered people” at the edge of the Empire were just learning to read and write – with gusto. As peaceful Rome turned to chaos, chaotic Ireland grew more peaceful – the key word being more. Following the lead of their eclectic and passionately spiritual patron saint, St. Patrick, and his spiritual son, Columcille, they built centers of learning that not only drew visitors from the Continent, but sent a wave of missionaries that restored and returned the Greek, Roman, Christian and even “pagan” classic literature to Europe.

Just a fun note or two on Patrick. He was not actually Irish. He was a Briton – “almost Roman” – that was captured, enslaved and brutally mistreated by the Irish as a young boy. Following a vision from God – like King David he was a shepherd and solitude and deprivation turned his thoughts toward God – he escaped Ireland and received a seminary education. But his heart beat for Ireland. In one of history’s unique footnotes, he became the first missionary since the Apostolic Age.

Also, he didn’t drive snakes out of Ireland, but he did curb the Irish passion for violence. Curbing the Irish passions for hard drink and, um, ah, for a liberated sense of sexuality, perhaps didn’t go quite as well for Patrick. One of the reasons Patricus was so well received by his one-time tormentors was that he may have been the only man to stand up to the Irish of his century and say, “I am not afraid of you, I fear only God.” That they liked and respected.

I’m only one in a long line of many to recommend Cahill’s short, poetic, sometimes rambling, but always charming narrative that brings history to life.