Exit Music by Ian Rankin

Exit Music by Ian Rankin is cur­rently avail­able in the UK and was pub­lished Sep­tem­ber 2007 by Orion and is the 17th entry in the DI John Rebus series set in and around Edinburgh.

In this entry, DI Rebus is one week away from retire­ment when he catches a case that appears more than just a ran­dom mug­ging gone wrong. Rankin is end­ing his 20 year-long series with a strong fin­ish. Authors take note: it isn’t always nec­es­sary to kill off a major char­ac­ter just to make a change. You can always send him/her into retire­ment rather than a early grave.

Detec­tive Inspec­tor John Rebus and his pro­tégé, Siob­han Clarke arrive on scene and notices what appears to be like a open and shut case: a ran­dom attack on a deserted road in the mid­dle of the night. There are no wit­nesses save a young woman and a mid­dle aged cou­ple who dis­cov­ered the body. As the detec­tives inves­ti­gate the case, they dis­cover that the vic­tim was a poet and a dis­si­dent Russ­ian in exile who left the hotel alone after a read­ing at the Scot­tish Poetry Library.

Inter­view­ing wit­nesses and chas­ing down leads only cre­ates fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions because not every­body is telling the truth. There are just too many coin­ci­dences with too many peo­ple keep­ing silent about their asso­ci­a­tion with the vic­tim. Rebus and Clarke end up fol­low­ing a lead that brings them to the Scot­land Par­lia­ment thereby trans­form­ing this case into one with polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions that involves lucra­tive busi­ness deals and the push for Scot­land inde­pen­dence. It seems that Scot­land is play­ing host to sev­eral Russ­ian investors and there is worry that the mug­ger case may spook them right out of town if it is per­ceived as a hate crime.

My thoughts: The story and plot­ting are pretty solid. As with most police procedural’s some tend to be pretty rep­e­ti­tious and some can be pretty inter­est­ing. In Exit Music, it was a bit of both. There were a few sur­pris­ing plot twists (of one I guessed correctly) and the author man­ages infuse a nos­tal­gic feel to the story since this is Rebus’s last week on the job. The novel takes place dur­ing the course of 9 days after which DI Rebus is retired from duty. In Edin­burgh, CID offi­cers retire from duty at age 60. Through­out most of the novel the author hints at what the future has in store for DI Rebus and his part­ner, Siob­han. One thing is for sure: Rebus def­i­nitely won’t be at home just twid­dling his thumbs.

I’ve read three books from this series and have enjoyed them. I am not a reader who reads books “in order” so I didn’t feel lost at all, skip­ping to the end. So, prior knowl­edge of the char­ac­ters or story is not nec­es­sary. Exit Music is a solidly plot­ted novel told from a cou­ple of POV, mainly from DS Siob­han Clarke and DI Rebus. Most of the story arcs were tied up nicely save one or two. The novel didn’t rate as an “A” read for me because I could and did put this book down more than once. Over­all, I enjoyed DI Rebus last case. Also, I’ve enjoyed Rebus and his buck­ing of the sys­tem along with his chain smok­ing and drink­ing ways. My grade, B+. Mys­tery fans take note that “Exit Music” has not yet been released in the US yet and I was unsuc­cess­ful in find­ing a release date at this time. I do believe that his books are released a year ahead in the UK.

Tech­no­rati Tags: , , , ,