SUSPENSE: Even with Complaints, Rankin still the one to beat

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Ian Rankin (CP)

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The second of Ian Rankin's cops-investigating-cops novels opens routinely enough: a neighbouring police force invites Edinburgh Insp. Malcolm Fox's Complaints team to find out whether three officers covered up the seamy transgressions of an oversexed detective.

But The Impossible Dead (Orion, 384 pages, $35) quickly spirals beyond the stonewalling of close-ranks coppers in the seaside town of Kirkcaldy. The rogue detective’s uncle, a retired cop who fingered his nephew, is murdered. And it seems he was digging into the apparent 1985 suicide of a nationalist firebrand whose widow claims he was assassinated by British security. Cue the spooks and smarmy politicians.

While Rankin's superb plotting and smooth execution are not truant here, his latest effort somehow falls flat, a modicum of Scots humour failing to lighten the load. Despite some wry banter with his mates and some byplay with his ailing father, on-the-dole sister and a former flame, Fox remains largely a cipher.

"It's just not Rebus" is an easy verdict on Rankin's efforts since he retired the Edinburgh inspector in 2007 to wholesale lamentation. But while this may not be his best, the much-feted Scottish writer is still the measure of crime-writing prowess.

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Headstone (Mysterious Press, 256 pages, $27) is typical of Ken Bruen's celebrated Jack Taylor series, offering a slim novel of nasty Irish noir with a cynically lyrical narrative and blunt, no-nonsense dialogue.

Taylor is, in his own words, a "broken-down Irish PI, with a limp and a hearing aid" who is far too fond of the bottle, various medications and violence -- not necessarily in that order. With his tenuous allies Garda (police) Sgt. Ridge and Zen ex-drug dealer Stewart, he dodges mob hits, thuggish cops and even a crooked Opus Dei priest to go after a quartet of rich-kid killers preying on Galway's weak and vulnerable.

It's all 100 per cent Irish: tough, bleakly fatalistic, but full of keen observation and dark, sardonic wit.

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Former Saskatoon broadcasting engineer Alan Bradley is said to be crafting his next Flavia de Luce whodunit from his retirement home in Malta.

And well he should, because I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Doubleday, 288 pages, $30), the fourth in the series launched to multiple awards in 2009 with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, retains much of the '50s-era kid-sleuth pluck and breezy erudition of its predecessors.

Bradley marries the "Golden Age" conventions of the Nancy Drew/Eloise puzzle books with those of the English-village cosy: A precocious 11-year-old with a widowed father and two spiteful sisters, a murder with a limited cast of suspects in a drafty old house, the loyal-retainer ally Dogger and a police foil in Inspector Hewitt.

This time, a Christmas Eve snowstorm has trapped half the village of Bishop's Lacey after a fund-raising performance by a movie cast allowed to film in the de Luce manse by her cash-strapped father. Then an aging movie queen is found strangled. Flavia matches wits with Hewitt and solves the case after a perilous climax.

It's all quite silly, of course, but the brisk pace and quirky characterizations carried by Flavia's droll and spunky narration is ripe for the early-teen Harry Potter crowd. And she does it without waving a wand.

Short strokes

Enter, Night, by Michael Rowe (ChiZine, 275 pages, $18): A Canadian twist on the classic vampire tale, with a widow returning to her north-of-Superior hometown just in time for the emergence of an imprisoned vamp who had migrated as a Jesuit missionary in the 1600s. (No word on how he avoided the crucifix and holy water.) Much bloody mayhem ensues, mixed with adolescent romance, but Rowe's dubious plot undercuts the suitably gothic atmosphere.

Shelter, by Harlan Coben (Penguin, 288 pages, $22): The dauntingly prolific New Jersey author makes his young-adult novel debut with a spinoff of the popular Myron Bolitar sports-agent mystery series. Nephew Mickey fights to rescue his new girlfriend from white-slavers with the help of a benevolent but shadowy organization. The ludicrous (and pretty raw) plot, unaided by dated high-school caricatures, should deter both parents and all but the most gullible teens.

John Sullivan is editor of the Free Press Autos, Homes and Travel sections and specialty websites.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 12, 2011 J9