Resurrection Men (Inspector Rebus, #13) by Ian Rankin (GoodReads xpost)

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin


Sadly disappointing....somehow, this book never lived up to its brilliant premise: Rebus, a walking nightmare of an employee, throws a mug of tea at his female boss and ex-lover and gets sent to a combination boot camp for recruits/rehab center for cops on their last chance. But really he's there undercover, trying to secretly investigate a ring of dirty cops....without revealing his own secrets about a cold case they've been assigned by surprise. Or is his boss trying to get rid of Rebus once and for all? Is he setting up innocent men or being set up himself? (It can't be a coincidence that a book whose plot depends so much on modern art is all about being framed....) One cop is known as "the Glasgow Rebus" which is what inspires our antihero to get set up in the first place. Does he want to smash the mirror and bring his double to justice, or join him in finally going all the way over the line? Like I said, brilliant.

But the story somehow just dies, unlike Rebus's beloved Saab, less than halfway through and I had to struggle to finish it, like chewing a bite of meat that in your mouth suddenly turns out to be all gristle. There's one sparking moment when Rebus and his double/nemesis Cafferty face each other in a tiny interview room, but the will-he nill-he ambiguity that should suffuse the pages is just....absent. Often these books read like novelizations of screenplays to me (yes I realize it's the other way round): good actors could bring the implicit tensions to life with eloquent voices and faces, but flat prose can't do it.

I did like Siobhan very much, and her prickliness caused by the way she constantly has to keep charming and soothing the men in her workplace in order to get them to just do their jobs and work with her, but also turn them down when they keep trying to bag her, and the cautious empathy she and her female boss have for each other. A subtheme of this book is women working with men, working for men, being seen as men's possessions, and there's one terrifying moment when the sexualized violence threatens Siobhan herself. But a few moments aren't enough to redeem the whole book.

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