I travel via murder mystery.
The best way to see Boston is when you're holding a Dennis Lehane book. If I'm in the Southwest, my thoughts turn to Becky Masterman. Recently, in California, I had a great companion in the form of "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara. (Jeffrey Toobin's "American Heiress"--a murder mystery in its own way--is also very fine California reading.)
A year ago, my husband and I went to Edinburgh. The writers' museum there spent a great deal of space on Robert Burns and on Sir Walter Scott, but--good grief!--who cares about them? My husband purchased "The Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," but I can't say I have much interest in Robert Louis Stevenson. What grabbed me was the temporary exhibit: "Thirty Years of Inspector Rebus." For thirty years, Ian Rankin has plotted the Rebus adventures, and he has done a fair amount of his work in Edinburgh itself, in a slightly seedy spot, "the Oxford Bar." (He occasionally has Rebus visit the Oxford Bar, and sometimes Rebus will notice an enigmatic, lonely writer, drinking and working in a corner.)
Rankin went to graduate school and studied the work of Muriel Spark--another Scotland writer--and he, Rankin, had pretensions to literary greatness. His early work was mannered and off-putting. Then, gradually, he "fell into" the detective novel. His first six or seven efforts fell short (in his own opinion). He feels he didn't really take off until "Black and Blue," which features four cases at once and a creepy killer called "Bible John." After that: "The Hanging Garden," which asks what you are supposed to do with an alleged ex-Nazi living in safety in the United Kingdom many decades after the Holocaust; "Dead Souls," about pedophilia and the phenomenon of missing persons, among other things; "Set in Darkness," which, I believe, has a cannibalism sub-plot. And so many other novels.
Rankin feels that you don't have to sacrifice literary greatness if you're working in the world of genre fiction. He writes about one inspector, but he tackles tremendous problems while staying under the umbrella of "detective fiction." Mid-career, he seemed to make the novels fatter and fatter, entertaining as much complexity as he could. All the while, he gave us an inspector, like "Prime Suspect"'s Jane Tennison, who does not consistently act in a rational, self-protective way, who torpedoes relationships, who struggles (half-heartedly) with staying sober. Rankin seems right not to worry too much about getting called a "genre writer"; Dickens, Poe, Dostoyevsky, and even Jane Austen all wrote works that had Mystery Novel elements, and we do not dismiss these writers today.
The exhibit at the writers' museum didn't have a great deal of material. You could see various book jackets, translations, and a sketch of the Oxford Bar that Rankin's son once completed. You could see Rankin on camera, opining about "the Two Edinburghs" (one fancy, one an underbelly), commenting on Rebus's future (he will continue to get old, I think, but will not fade away). It seems that Rankin did try to retire Rebus, at one point, but maybe Rankin couldn't get very excited about Malcolm Fox (a new invention), and Rebus crept right back toward center-stage, within a few years. (This seemed to happen with Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford, as well.)
As a reader, I'm torn between pushing myself into new territories and sticking with the old familiars. Rendell and Rankin are comforting to me, because they both found their own small squares of canvas and worked those squares, over and over again, with unflagging energy, for many years. (And Rankin is still alive and working.) If you pick up a Rebus novel, you know the writing will be more intelligent and lyrical than the stuff you find in a standard thriller, you know the dialogue will be tense and will make effective use of subtext, and you know that the plot will unspool in idiosyncratic, startling ways. At the same time, if you stay on Rankin's terrain, novel after novel after novel, your imaginative world may start to feel small.
But: Whom am I kidding? Rankin is an inspiration. To write well, and to continue to find new material, for so many years? You have to be an extraordinary person.
My husband and I will travel to Greece in August, and I'm concerned because I don't have an Athens-based mystery writer lined up. I may need to switch in Donna Leon, and pretend that Venice is culturally comparable to Athens. Or I guess I could start to read Mary Renault's novels, and look for elements that they have in common with a murder mystery. We shall see. I have several weeks to develop my plan!
P.S. One treat of Rankin's works is the references to Edinburgh landmarks. A distraught man kills himself by throwing his body off "Arthur's Seat," the grand, towering landmass next to Holyrood. Strange misdeeds occur in the new Parliament building. There are those smoky nights at the Oxford Bar, and so on.
P.P.S. I did not get to Glasgow, source of inspiration for another path-breaking mystery novelist, Val McDermid. Next time!
P.P.P.S. I think, in the brief period where Rebus was "retired," Rankin stumbled. He wrote a heist novel, "Doors Open," about an art museum in Edinburgh. I didn't dislike the book, but the absence of hard-living, grumbly Rebus felt really, really painful. It was like reading St. Aubyn when he chooses to stray from the stories about Patrick Melrose. What is it about certain characters who seem to light their creators on fire?
The best way to see Boston is when you're holding a Dennis Lehane book. If I'm in the Southwest, my thoughts turn to Becky Masterman. Recently, in California, I had a great companion in the form of "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara. (Jeffrey Toobin's "American Heiress"--a murder mystery in its own way--is also very fine California reading.)
A year ago, my husband and I went to Edinburgh. The writers' museum there spent a great deal of space on Robert Burns and on Sir Walter Scott, but--good grief!--who cares about them? My husband purchased "The Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," but I can't say I have much interest in Robert Louis Stevenson. What grabbed me was the temporary exhibit: "Thirty Years of Inspector Rebus." For thirty years, Ian Rankin has plotted the Rebus adventures, and he has done a fair amount of his work in Edinburgh itself, in a slightly seedy spot, "the Oxford Bar." (He occasionally has Rebus visit the Oxford Bar, and sometimes Rebus will notice an enigmatic, lonely writer, drinking and working in a corner.)
Rankin went to graduate school and studied the work of Muriel Spark--another Scotland writer--and he, Rankin, had pretensions to literary greatness. His early work was mannered and off-putting. Then, gradually, he "fell into" the detective novel. His first six or seven efforts fell short (in his own opinion). He feels he didn't really take off until "Black and Blue," which features four cases at once and a creepy killer called "Bible John." After that: "The Hanging Garden," which asks what you are supposed to do with an alleged ex-Nazi living in safety in the United Kingdom many decades after the Holocaust; "Dead Souls," about pedophilia and the phenomenon of missing persons, among other things; "Set in Darkness," which, I believe, has a cannibalism sub-plot. And so many other novels.
Rankin feels that you don't have to sacrifice literary greatness if you're working in the world of genre fiction. He writes about one inspector, but he tackles tremendous problems while staying under the umbrella of "detective fiction." Mid-career, he seemed to make the novels fatter and fatter, entertaining as much complexity as he could. All the while, he gave us an inspector, like "Prime Suspect"'s Jane Tennison, who does not consistently act in a rational, self-protective way, who torpedoes relationships, who struggles (half-heartedly) with staying sober. Rankin seems right not to worry too much about getting called a "genre writer"; Dickens, Poe, Dostoyevsky, and even Jane Austen all wrote works that had Mystery Novel elements, and we do not dismiss these writers today.
The exhibit at the writers' museum didn't have a great deal of material. You could see various book jackets, translations, and a sketch of the Oxford Bar that Rankin's son once completed. You could see Rankin on camera, opining about "the Two Edinburghs" (one fancy, one an underbelly), commenting on Rebus's future (he will continue to get old, I think, but will not fade away). It seems that Rankin did try to retire Rebus, at one point, but maybe Rankin couldn't get very excited about Malcolm Fox (a new invention), and Rebus crept right back toward center-stage, within a few years. (This seemed to happen with Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford, as well.)
As a reader, I'm torn between pushing myself into new territories and sticking with the old familiars. Rendell and Rankin are comforting to me, because they both found their own small squares of canvas and worked those squares, over and over again, with unflagging energy, for many years. (And Rankin is still alive and working.) If you pick up a Rebus novel, you know the writing will be more intelligent and lyrical than the stuff you find in a standard thriller, you know the dialogue will be tense and will make effective use of subtext, and you know that the plot will unspool in idiosyncratic, startling ways. At the same time, if you stay on Rankin's terrain, novel after novel after novel, your imaginative world may start to feel small.
But: Whom am I kidding? Rankin is an inspiration. To write well, and to continue to find new material, for so many years? You have to be an extraordinary person.
My husband and I will travel to Greece in August, and I'm concerned because I don't have an Athens-based mystery writer lined up. I may need to switch in Donna Leon, and pretend that Venice is culturally comparable to Athens. Or I guess I could start to read Mary Renault's novels, and look for elements that they have in common with a murder mystery. We shall see. I have several weeks to develop my plan!
P.S. One treat of Rankin's works is the references to Edinburgh landmarks. A distraught man kills himself by throwing his body off "Arthur's Seat," the grand, towering landmass next to Holyrood. Strange misdeeds occur in the new Parliament building. There are those smoky nights at the Oxford Bar, and so on.
P.P.S. I did not get to Glasgow, source of inspiration for another path-breaking mystery novelist, Val McDermid. Next time!
P.P.P.S. I think, in the brief period where Rebus was "retired," Rankin stumbled. He wrote a heist novel, "Doors Open," about an art museum in Edinburgh. I didn't dislike the book, but the absence of hard-living, grumbly Rebus felt really, really painful. It was like reading St. Aubyn when he chooses to stray from the stories about Patrick Melrose. What is it about certain characters who seem to light their creators on fire?
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