Rebus finds his social conscience

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Edinburgh Detective Inspector John Rebus is one of the longest-running characters in modern-day crime fiction, thanks to the extraordinary writing skills of his creator, Scottish author Ian Rankin. Winner of the coveted Chandler-Fulbright award (funded by the estate of iconic mystery writer Raymond Chandler), Rankin has treated his readers to 18 years' worth of novels and short stories featuring the cynical and case-hardened Rebus. The latest, Fleshmarket Alley, finds our hero investigating the death of a refugee in a low-rent public housing project. Rebus quickly comes face-to-face with a new breed of racism, forcing him to look into his own closely held (and rarely examined) prejudices. He is exposed for the first time to the so-called "refugee detention housing," run by a for-profit American prison corporation, a holding tank for asylum seekers while the sluggish Scottish bureaucracy determines their fates. All the while, underworld profiteers game the system, offering a practical, if illegal, opportunity for sanctuary to the desperate immigrants. The Rebus novels have always been swiftly paced and superbly plotted, Fleshmarket Alley adds a new dimension of social awareness, a component that has been missing (or at least understated) to date.


Intrigue in today's Russia

Set against the fall of communism, Boris Starling's Vodka reveals the infighting and intrigues that accompany the privatization of Russia's most prestigious distillery, Red October. American banker Alice Liddell is brought in to manage the operation; she has presided over similar procedures in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and is uniquely qualified for the job. What neither she nor her employers have counted on, however, is her increasing addiction both to premium vodka and to the charismatic overseer of the distillery, a tattooed scofflaw well placed in the Moscow mafia. With Chechen thugs on one side and deposed bureaucrats on the other, it becomes difficult (both for the characters and the reader) to determine who the good guys are, if indeed there are any to be found. Vodka is the resounding metaphor throughout, serving as bellwether (and vehicle) for the highest highs and lowest lows, as focal point of the struggle between battered socialism and raw capitalism, and as perhaps the only stable currency in an economy gone hopelessly awry. Graphic violence abounds: Vodka is not a novel for the squeamish. That said, it is likely the best mystery of modern-day Russia since Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park.


Mystery of the month

The BookPage Tip of the Ice Pick Award goes to Prague-based author Robert Eversz for the fourth installment in his Nina Zero series, Digging James Dean. "Nina Zero" is the nom de lens of an outsider paparazzo, a Generation-X con out on parole after her (mostly) unwitting role in an airport bombing. She drives a Cadillac ragtop of "a certain age" (that is to say, one with prominent tail fins) and travels in the company of an uncharacteristically friendly (and toothless) Rottweiler. Perhaps you will remember the Raelians, the quasi-religious organization that popped up in the news a few years back, fronted by a strange collagen-enhanced spokesperson, citing our extraterrestrial origins and claiming to have cloned the first human baby? How much of a leap would it be to find their spiritual successors robbing the graves of Hollywood superstars, using the retrieved DNA to clone such timeless heartthrobs as Marilyn Monroe, Rudolph Valentino or the aforementioned James Dean? Once this would have been the province of science fiction novels, bad science fiction novels at that, but these days the prospect is not nearly so far-fetched. Still, it would require some seriously spaced out wackos to dig that first grave, and Eversz has provided a cast of misguided villains well up to the task: The Church of Divine Thespians (one charismatic leader and a gaggle of strays, runaways and Hollywood hangers-on as acolytes). Nina's photojournalistic intrusion is highly unwelcome, and she soon finds herself smack in the middle of trouble. Digging James Dean is amply populated with the sort of people you'd expect to find in a nuthouse, or, well, Southern California. Eversz pokes fun at L.A. eccentricity, religious cults and inept authorities in equal measure; no cow is too sacred for his sharpened pencil. And Nina Zero is cooler than ever, in fact, cooler than any of us will ever be.


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