Lugubrious Machinists Jolted by the Tocsin,

After taking around 6 months to finish reading the book reviewed previously in The Bellyaches, I managed to finish Exit Music by Ian Rankin in 5 days; this is due to a combination of spare time, nice weather and the way the Rebus series is written – I can rattle through them at quite a rate if I wanted to.

The final page marks the end of Rebus’ career in CID and leaves me wondering if it was such a great book. The murder of Russian dissident and poet, Alexander Todorov, whilst some Russian businessmen are in town then the murder of Charles Riordan, a sound engineer who worked on recording projects involving both parties, leaves Rebus a race against retirement to solve the case. Rebus’ nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty, is also thrown into the mix for good measure.

I will try not to ruin the book for The Bellyaches massive, however, in posing the question I want to, I fear I will. Is it the way of a great crime writer to make loads of neat connections between all the characters and allude to certain potential perpetrators before plucking a seemingly random one out and naming them as the guilty party? I can’t decide is Rankin was amazingly skilful or just annoying, he forced me to build up a dislike of certain characters and in the end, when they weren’t convicted of anything, I was left disappointed. I suppose that’s what is called ‘a twist’.

Rankin leaves himself options for the future. There is scope to continue the series with DS Clarke at the helm, there may be enough flaws in Rebus’ underling character to write more compelling crime stories. Rebus may never fully retire from detective work, there is the possibility that he may work with a team of other retired CID officers who work on cold cases. I don’t think Ian Rankin is finished with crime writing just yet.