Dead Souls

The Sins of The Parents Curse the Children

Dead Souls by Ian Rankin was the winner of the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 2005, six years after it was published in the U.K.

Detective Inspector John Rebus ties together the suicide of one of his colleagues, an investigation into a paedophile ring, the release of a convicted killer and the disappearance of a former girlfriend’s son in a literary slice of tartan noir.

Synopsis

Carry Oakes is a nasty character. Convicted in the U.S. of multiple charges of murder, the Americans have released him on a technicality after serving fifteen years of a life sentence and then deported him back to his home town of Edinburgh, where he has scores to settle.

Darren Rough, a known paedophile, is spotted taking photographs at Edinburgh Zoo. Shortly afterwards, somebody outs him to his local community, in a council estate of tower blocks that overlooks Arthurs Seat.

Jim Margolies is an up-and-coming police officer who inexplicably takes his own life by jumping from Sailsbury Crags on the city’s edge.

Damon Mee is the nineteen-year-old son of an old flame. He disappeared one evening whilst nightclubbing with his friends.

John Rebus is the police officer embroiled in the mess, some of it his own making.

Review

Ian Rankin’s Dead Souls is the 10th in the John Rebus series. The plot encompasses paedophilia, suicide and murder, and it is a dark read (not that any of the Rebus novels are uplifting).

The tale is a loose patchwork of four stories that thread together as Rebus chases the individual strands down. It is a messy and complex book which mirrors the reality of life. Whilst some elements are knotted off, others are not, leaving an untidy edge. This worked for me, I’ve yet to find a nice neat outcome in life, but some readers find the ambiguous conclusion frustrating.

There is a powerful underlying theme. Each subplot echoes the idea that our past moulds our future, and questions how much control we have over our destiny. The paedophile Darren Rough was abused in a care home as a child. How much of his adult behaviour is caused by that experience? Rankin echoes that question in each plot line, questioning how much of our future is predetermined.

Rankin pulls this off by drawing out his characters, from the pathetic Darren Rough to the vicious and manipulative Carry Oates, whose mind games will make your skin crawl. 

The message of the fax was clear and simple. It said Cary Oakes would kill again. 

The psychologist had warned the authorities of this. The psychologist said, Cary Oakes has little concept of right and wrong. There were lots of psychological terms applied to this. The word ‘psychopath’ wasn’t used much anymore by the experts, but reading between the lines and the jargon, Rebus knew that was what they were dealing with. Anti-social tendencies … deep-seated sense of betrayal …

Dead Souls by Ian Rankin

The book’s alarmingly clear depiction of the shadier side of Edinburgh life, from dingy council flats to bored bouncers and seedy nightclubs, provides the perfect backdrop to the story. (Rankin’s unnerving description of Edinburgh criminality is all the more disturbing given that he wrote most of the novel in a farmhouse in the sun-kissed Dordogne)

My only criticism of the book is Rebus himself. He drinks too much, breaks the rules, challenges authority, and is loved and loathed by his superiors. He also carries more than his fair share of Demons. That doesn’t make him a bad character, but the pencil portrait could just as easily be applied to Dave Robicheaux, Matthew Scudder or Bernie Gunther.

Rebus has now appeared in twenty-four books. Perhaps he is a little typecast.

Excerpt

The place suddenly became ridiculous to him, a chunk of prime Edinburgh real estate given over to the unreal … And then he saw the camera. 

Saw it because it replaced the face that should have been there. The man was standing on a grassy slope sixty-odd feet away, adjusting the focus on a sizeable telescopic lens. The mouth below the camera’s body was a thin line of concentration, rippling slightly as forefinger and thumb fine-tuned the apparatus. He wore a black denim jacket, creased chinos, and running shoes. He’d removed a faded blue baseball cap from his head. It dangled from a free finger as he took his pictures. His hair was thinning and brown, forehead wrinkled. Recognition came as soon as he lowered the camera. Rebus looked away, turning in the direction of the photographer’s subjects: children. Children leaning into the meerkat enclosure. All you could see were shoe-soles and legs, girls’ skirts and the smalls of backs where T-shirts and jerseys had ridden up.

Rebus knew the man. Context made it easier. Hadn’t seen him in probably four years but couldn’t forget eyes like that, the hunger shining on cheeks whose suffused redness highlighted old acne scars. The hair had been longer four years ago, curling over misshapen ears. Rebus sought for a name, at the same time reaching into his pocket for his radio. The photographer caught the movement, eyes turning to match Rebus’s gaze, which was already moving elsewhere. Recognition worked both ways. The lens came off and was stuffed into a shoulder-bag. A lens-cap was clipped over the aperture. And then the man was off, walking briskly downhill. Rebus yanked out his radio.

Dead Souls by Ian Rankin